The Jealous One (2 page)

Rosamund would never have believed that so confused a dream could yet be so vivid. There had been no sense of struggle, for her savagely pushing hands had seemed to meet with no resistance, as is the way of dreams. The blind rage had seemed simply to disintegrate, to become a wild wind blowing, a whirling panorama of stars in a black sky, a throbbing of mighty sound, as of waves crashing with frightful nearness. And there, in the thunderous centre of it all, had been Lindy’s hated, beautiful face, hurtling away into the darkness. Lindy’s face, ugly and terrified at last!—the dream-Rosamund had registered, with terrible
dream-glee
; and even in the very moment of waking, the glee
remained
—a dreadful, pitiless exaltation. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’ she began to cry aloud—but, after all, it wasn’t a cry at all: just a painful rasp of sound in her sore, aching throat. The thunder of unknown seas narrowed itself down to a dull throbbing in her own head; the star-seared
darkness
became the chequered light from the street lamp on the walls of her bedroom, where night seemed to have already fallen while she slept.

Of course. I’ve got ’flu, Rosamund remembered. No
wonder
I’m having extraordinary dreams. Through the
throbbing
in her head, the roaring in her ears, she tried to sit up … to remember…. And now, as she raised herself, it was forced upon her reviving consciousness that she was not properly in bed at all, but just lying on top of the
eiderdown
, fully dressed. And she was cold, icily cold. She must have flopped down here exhausted after finishing the
essential
housework this morning—or was it early afternoon?

I wonder if I’ve still got a temperature? she mused dazedly and reached out towards the bedside lamp. With the sudden
glare of light, full reality ought to have been switched on too; and yet her recent dream seemed to cling about her still, even as she sat up. Her whole brain, her body itself, seemed still to throb with the terrible triumph of her dream victory; she felt again that incandescent flash of evil joy as she watched Lindy hurtling to disaster—her beauty, her sweetness, her serenity, about to be eclipsed for ever.

Oh, the glory of it! Oh, the perfect, exquisite pay-off, fierce and unarguable, like the dream wind whistling and screaming through her hair!

For a moment Rosamund was almost in the dream again; but she forced her eyes open once more onto the circle of bright, real light, took the thermometer from its case, and put it into her mouth.

What had her temperature been this afternoon? She couldn’t remember—couldn’t, indeed, remember having taken it at all, though she must have, else how could the thermometer have been lying here, all ready, beside the bed?

How sad it was, it suddenly occurred to her, to be lying here, all alone, taking one’s own temperature every four hours! As she reclined against the pillows, waiting
immobilised
for the appointed two minutes, Rosamund allowed
herself
, as a sort of invalid’s treat, to be flooded by self-pity. A year ago—even six months ago—it wouldn’t have been like this. A year ago Geoffrey would have been anxious about her, full of sympathy and affection. He would have noticed first thing in the morning that she was ill, and would have fussed and worried delightfully; bringing her breakfast in bed, dashing home in his lunch hour to see how she was; and by now he would have cooked her a dainty little meal, and over the bedside light he would have draped his old red scarf to protect her eyes from the glare. The last time she had been ill he had done this, and she remembered how she had lain lapped in rosy light, cradled triumphant in her illness, like a queen upon her throne.

The aching in her head grew worse as she blinked back the slow, dull tears, half stupefied by her longing for
Geoffrey. Not Geoffrey as he was now—polite, and dutiful, and ill at ease—but Geoffrey as he had been once—Geoffrey as he had been through all the long years until Lindy came to live next door.

Half past nine, and he still wasn’t in! How heartless he was! As part of her solitary little treat, Rosamund was allowing herself to be unreasonable, too, as well as
self-pitying
. Because it was unreasonable, she knew it was, to expect Geoffrey to cancel his late night when he didn’t even know she was ill.

But he
should
have known, protested the spoilt, childish bit of Rosamund’s mind, and she sucked at the
thermometer
like a baby sucking at a dummy, for comfort without sustenance. He
shouldn’t
have been so easily deceived when she pretended she was perfectly well this morning, and got up as usual and began bustling round the kitchen. He should have seen she was forcing herself to it—driving
herself
to the limits of her strength in order not to play the part of the malingering wife—the wife who manufactures an
illness
in the hopes of recapturing through pity what she can no longer claim through love.

And it’s not
fair,
I really
was
ill, there was no question of malingering, thought Rosamund, weakly indignant. As if her temperature would provide the final answer to all her problems, she whipped the thermometer from her mouth and peered at it under the light, twisting and turning it this way and that to bring the magical silver thread into
existence
… the little silver messenger from another world … he loves me … he loves me not….

Nearly 102°. Rosamund was pleased that her temperature was so high. It sort of accounted for—well, everything. For feeling so depressed and ill-used: for thinking that Geoffrey ought to be back already when he wasn’t: and for having had that awful dream about poor Lindy. Fancy dreaming of pushing Lindy off a cliff or whatever it was—yes, it must have been a cliff because of the waves crashing and the wind howling—and then being so pleased about it—not the least bit shocked or frightened, as you would be in real life
if you found you’d murdered a neighbour you disliked.

Disliked? Well, she did dislike Lindy, of course; hated her often. Who wouldn’t, in her situation? But—and this was really what had made it all so peculiarly painful—her dislike had never succeeded in blinding her entirely to Lindy’s many virtues. Lindy was fun; she was gay, and vital, and full of originality. She could often be kind, too, in her own way, every now and then showing a surprising degree of shrewd understanding for those in trouble. You could not even say that she had deliberately set out to hurt
Rosamund
, or deliberately tried to break up her marriage. And indeed she wasn’t breaking it up. What was happening was something much slighter than that—much more difficult to put into words. Just a look in Geoffrey’s face, really; a sort of buoyancy in his voice when he embarked on a sentence into which he was going to bring Lindy’s name; a way of
glancing
at Lindy’s house instead of at his own as he unlatched the front gate in the evenings.

But none of it was Lindy’s fault, anyway. It never was the other woman’s fault really, Rosamund assured herself, with fierce modernity. It was the wife’s fault, always, if she so failed to please her husband that he was driven for solace to some other woman. If she was to hate anyone for the
present
situation, it would be more reasonable to hate herself, Rosamund reflected … and then, once again, the feeling of the dream washed over her, and she knew that
reasonableness
didn’t come into it at all, never had and never could. The voice of reason was thin and tiny, like a caged canary chirping, among the savage thunders of her dream. The sense of mortal struggle was back with her again … the clutching, desperate hands … the joy of victory. How real, how vivid, fever can make a mere dream …!

And after all, here was Geoffrey back! Rosamund heard his feet bounding up the stairs with anxious haste. Had he, after all, suspected that she was ill this morning?

Rosamund half rose from the bed in confused hope as the door burst open, and she felt her head spinning. Surely his kind, tired face looked more worried, more dismayed, than
even her wildest vanity could have warranted? He seemed hardly to see her—certainly not to notice that she had been lying down.

‘Rosamund! I say!’ he exclaimed tensely. ‘Have you any idea what’s happened to Lindy? She’s disappeared!’

In actual fact, of course, Lindy never had been beautiful. When Rosamund had first seen her, flushed and untidy, leaning into the back of the removal van to explain
something
to the men rootling about inside, she had summed her up as a rather dumpy, fussy little woman. ‘Woman’ mark you, not ‘girl’, was the word that had sprung to her mind at that first glimpse, when she and Geoffrey had been peeping, guiltily, like two naughty children, at the arrival of their new neighbour. It was only later that Lindy had begun to seem so young, as well as so beautiful. It was only later, too, that her house had begun to seem so beautifully and so tastefully furnished. On the day of the move, her furniture had looked absolutely dreadful, bumping its way sordidly across the pavement, every stain, every worn patch of
upholstery
, cruelly exposed to the blaze of a July afternoon.

‘School teacher’, Geoffrey had surmised cheerfully, his arm thrown lightly across Rosamund’s shoulder as they both peered with companionable, ill-bred curiosity round the edge of the bedroom curtain. ‘School teacher, full of earnest, progressive theories about the potentialities of the young. The sort that loses her illusions late—good, sturdy, well nourished illusions, built to last. I wonder how long they’ll stand up to living next door to our Peter and his pals …?’

They both giggled. In those days—barely six months ago
though it was—they had both been able to laugh at their sixteen-year-old son’s shortcomings. It hadn’t occurred to either of them, yet, to blame the other one for everything that went wrong. So they stood there at peace, intent and happy as children at the Zoo, watching a great clumsy greenish-yellow settee blundering hideously across the
pavement
. The men had to tip it at an angle to get it through the little iron gate of the front garden, and at another angle again to get it through the front door into the anonymous, echoing cavity of Next Door.

‘Cat?’ Rosamund put the eliptical question confidently, serene in the certainty that Geoffrey would understand not only the question but all its ramifications. For cats were good, in hers and Geoffrey’s happily arbitrary scale of values. Cat-lovers were better—nicer—more amusing-than dog-lovers, or budgerigar-lovers. Dog-lovers were
sentimental
, and budgerigar-lovers—well, it was rather awful to keep creatures in cages, wasn’t it?

Geoffrey pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘No cat,’ he opined, after several moments’ reflection; and Rosamund felt his arm tighten very slightly round her shoulders—a gesture of recognition—of gratitude—for the total understanding which made such monosyllabic exchanges rich beyond the dreams of oratory.

‘But all the same, I don’t think she’ll mind the guitar,’ he added, modifying a little the elaborate survey of the new neighbour’s shortcomings which had just been completed in three words. ‘At least, she may
mind
it, but she’ll pride
herself
on not making a fuss about that sort of thing. Just as good.’

‘Better,’ Rosamund pointed out. ‘People who pride
themselves
on not minding noise can be relied on to go on
priding
themselves, no matter how bad it gets. With people who actually
don’t
mind, there’s always the risk that there’s
some
degree of noise that they
will
mind. And then you’ve had it. Car?’

‘Ye-es. I’m afraid so. Probably.’

Cars were bad, too. They were almost the same as not
liking cats. Lots of their friends
did
have cars, of course, but it was a point against them. Geoffrey and Rosamund had often talked about it—how silly it was to drive everywhere when you might be enjoying the walk, or the luxury of being carried along by public transport with someone else having to worry about the traffic jams and the one-way streets. How bad it was for children, too, to be driven
everywhere
, they’d lose the use of their legs. Though Rosamund had to admit to herself that, in spite of his parents’ foresight in not owning a car, Peter seemed to be making very little use of his so carefully-preserved legs these days: he’d spent practically the whole of last holidays lying on his bed
reading
James Bond—or, worse still, just lying there, thinking dark thoughts about the universe, which he would later
enlarge
on, despondently and somewhat patronisingly, while his mother tried to count the laundry. Why can’t
I
have one of those secretive teenagers who never tell their parents
anything
? Rosamund would sometimes wonder ruefully as she tried to determine whether Life itself was a manifestation of futility as well as whether four shirts should really have cost 3/11½, and if so, how much could they possibly have been each?

Still, it was probably just a phase. The thought that
everything
was probably just a phase had sustained Rosamund through the sixteen years of Peter’s upbringing just as
religious
principles had once sustained her grandmother. Something settled, and all-embracing, and totally
unproveable
, that’s what you needed in dealing with children….

A sharp nudge and a muffled spurt of laughter from her husband recalled Rosamund’s attention to the scene below them. For a second they gripped each others’ hands in an ecstasy of shared disapprobation. This wasn’t just No Cat. It wasn’t even a Dog, in the ordinary sense. No, it was much, much worse. It was a Pekinese. A sniffing, snuffling, arrogant, utterly pedigree Pekinese, titupping ridiculously up the path behind its mistress.

‘Perfect!’ whispered Geoffrey, squeezing Rosamund’s hand exultantly: and: ‘Won’t it be fun to complain of the
yapping!’ commented Rosamund, giggling delightedly. ‘Shush!’ she amended, dodging back behind the curtain. ‘She’ll hear us!’

It really was the most shocking, vulgar behaviour, spying and jeering like this. But how delightful, how utterly
forgiveable
, shocking behaviour did become when
both
of you were engaged on it. And anyway, there was no malice in it. Neither of them had the least thing against their new neighbour really—didn’t know a thing about her yet, in spite of the guessing game which it was such fun to play.

‘Let’s invite her to supper tonight,’ suggested Rosamund impulsively. ‘She’s sure to be in a frightful muddle, with the electricity not wired up, or something, and all the shops shut till Monday. You go and ask her, Geoffrey—right now, while she’s still in and out of the front door, so that you won’t have to ring the bell or anything. We don’t want to make too much of a thing of it.’

Geoffrey looked at his watch. He often did this when in doubt about something, however little relevance the time of day had to the question in hand.

‘Well—I don’t know,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Aren’t we busy, or something?’

Rosamund gave him a little push. ‘You
know
we’re not, darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘You
know
we’re only going to do what we always do on Saturday afternoons—sit in
deckchairs
, talking about you perhaps mowing the lawn.’

‘But I
like
sitting in deckchairs talking about me perhaps mowing the lawn,’ protested Geoffrey longingly; but
Rosamund
continued to steer him relentlessly towards the stairs.

‘Go on. It’s only neighbourly. And besides, we’ll find out all about her,’ she encouraged; and as soon as Geoffrey was gone, she went into the kitchen to decide what to prepare for their unknown guest this evening.

Something cold, of course. Everybody liked cold food best in this weather. At least, anybody who didn’t knew very well that they were in the wrong. Salad, then. Salad, and cold meat, and stewed fruit. A bit dull, perhaps, but then Geoffrey and Rosamund had never believed in making a
great fuss about visitors. On the contrary, it was
Rosamund
’s custom to cook special delicacies only when the two of them were on their own, without even Peter. Peter, of course, was a major complication to any meal, with his newly-acquired cynicism about food, his enormous appetite (a most awkward combination, for all concerned); the uncertainty about whether he would be there at all; and, if there, whether he would have four or five hungry (and/or cynical) friends with him.

However, he’d said he would be out this evening, for what that was worth. She’d plan without him then, firmly, and if he turned up unexpectedly—that is, if you could call it
unexpectedly
when it happened like that two times out of three—then he could just get something for himself. There seemed to be a sort of limpness about teenage arrangements today, Rosamund reflected, that she didn’t remember from her own girlhood. Surely, in her day, when they’d planned to go out, they’d
gone
out—often in the teeth of fierce parental opposition? Now that parental opposition was
nonexistent
, there seemed to be left a sort of helpless vagueness about the social arrangements of the young; a built-in liability to cancellation or breakdown at every stage; an unerring tendency to deposit all the participants back in their parents’ homes in time for some meal that one had hoped they were going to be out for.

A few years ago, when Peter was a blue-eyed,
rosy-cheeked
urchin who looked as if he had come straight out of a William book, Rosamund would have wanted him to be there at supper; would have wanted to show him off to this new, childless neighbour—she and Geoffrey had leapt arrogantly to the conclusion that she
was
childless as soon as they saw the Pekinese. And no doubt, one day, it would be fun to show him off again, as a handsome young man embarked on some creditable career. But for the moment it seemed better to Rosamund to boast of his existence from as great a distance as could be contrived.

The front door slammed, and Geoffrey strode through into the kitchen, smiling.

‘You may down tools, dearest,’ he announced. ‘We don’t have to succour the starving after all.
She’s
going to succour
us.
She wants us to go in and have supper there. O.K.?’

‘Well——’ But——’ Surprise at this turning of the tables somehow drove Rosamund into mustering objections to the plan, just as though she, and not their new neighbour, were going to have all the trouble and inconvenience of it. ‘But how can she? I mean, she hasn’t even got the furniture in yet…. How can she possibly think of cooking for visitors? I mean, it must be hard enough to scratch up a meal for herself, the very first night. That was the whole idea of
asking
her.’

‘Yes, I know. I told her,’ said Geoffrey. ‘But she just laughed. She says. First things first, and it’s much more
important
to give a party than to get the furniture straight—and honestly, Rosamund, it does look rather fun. She’s been fixing candles all about on the packing cases and things, and flowers and so forth. We
will
go, won’t we?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. If you’re sure she really wants us. It still seems to me an awful lot of extra work for her, just on the day of the move….’

Rosamund was suddenly aware of how dull and
unimaginative
she was sounding, in comparison with all that
light-hearted
inventiveness next door. ‘Of
course
we’ll go,’ she amended, smiling. ‘It sounds great fun. But wouldn’t she like me to go in and help her, or something?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ll ask her, if you like. I’ve promised to go back and run a flex for her out through the french window so that she can fix up a sort of lantern arrangement in the garden.
We
ought to do that, you know, some time. I don’t know why we never thought of it. Oh, by the way, there
is
something she asked me to ask you. Have we got a piece of bright red ribbon, or something like that? She wants to make a bow for Shang Low. To celebrate their arrival.’

‘Shang Low?’ Rosamund knew, of course, who must be the owner of this ridiculous name. Her query was a plea not for information, but for reassurance. For there should have
been a note of mockery in Geoffrey’s voice as he retailed this whimsical request. They had
always
jeered at Pekineses, she and Geoffrey, it was one of their things. And as for
Pekineses
that needed red bows for special occasions …!

But Geoffrey, horrifyingly, did not seem to understand. He simply answered her question.

‘Shang Low—yes. The Peke,’ he explained easily. ‘Her sister had one called Shang High, you see, and really it was very appropriate, because——’

But Rosamund didn’t want to hear the story. Not hear it, at least, recounted in this innocent, genuinely amused style, with no recognition of its silliness, its affectation, its typical spinsterish sentimentality….

By sheer will-power, she checked the epithets piling up in her mind against the unheard and probably innocuous anecdote. Instead, she smiled.

‘You’d better let her tell me the story herself,’ she
admonished
. ‘She will, I’m sure, and it might be difficult to laugh in the right places if I’ve heard it before. It’s going to be quite a strain, isn’t it, adjusting ourselves to Peke-type humour at such close quarters!’

She giggled in terrible solitude for a fraction of a second; and then Geoffrey joined in, a tiny bit too late and a tiny bit too loud. And the joke did not lead to another joke.
Murmuring
something about ‘having promised…’, Geoffrey hurried away out of the kitchen and out of the house,
without
any red ribbon. And this piece of red ribbon, which they didn’t look for, didn’t find, and probably hadn’t got, became the very first of the objects which couldn’t ever again be mentioned between them.