Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 (8 page)

 
          
At
the time
that Liffey was taking her
second sleeping pill Bella was offering one to Richard. Bella sat on the end of
his bed, which Helga, the au-pair, had made up out of a sofa in Bella’s study.
Bella wore her glasses and looked intelligent and academic and as if she knew
what she was talking about. Her legs were hairy beneath fine nylon. Richard
declined the pill.

 
          
“Liffey
doesn’t believe in pills,” he said.

           
“You aren’t Liffey,” said Bella
firmly.

 
          
Richard
considered this.

 
          
“I
decide what we
do
said Richard, “but I
let Liffey decide what’s good for us. And taking sleeping pills isn’t, except
in extreme circumstances, and by mutual decision.”

 
          
“Liffey
isn’t here,” Bella pointed out. “And it was she who decided you’d live in the
country, not you.

 
          
It
was true. Liffey had edged over, suddenly and swiftly, if unconsciously, into
Richard’s side of the marriage, breaking unwritten laws.

 
          
“You
don’t think Liffey misread the timetable on purpose?” He was on the downward
slopes of the mountain of despondency, enjoying the easy run down: resentments
and realisations and justifications rattled along at his heels, and he
welcomed them. He wanted Bella to say yes, Liffey was not only in the wrong but
wilfully in the wrong.

 
          
“ ‘On
purpose’ might be too strong,” said Bella. “Try ‘by
accident on purpose.’ ”

 
          
“It’s
unfair of her,” said Richard. “I’ve always tried to make her happy, I really
have, Bella. I’ve taken being a husband very seriously.”

 
          
“Bully
for you,” said Bella, settling in cosily at the end of the bed, digging bony
buttocks in.

 
          
“But
one expects a return. Is that unreasonable?”

 
          
“Never
say ‘one,’ ” said Bella. “Say ‘
I.
’ ‘One’
is a class-based concept, used to justify any amount of bad behaviour.”

 
          
“Very
well,” said Richard. “I expect a return. And the truth is
,
Liffey has shown that she doesn’t care for my comfort and convenience, only for
her own. And when I look into my heart, where there used to be a kind of warm
round centre, which was love for Liffey, there’s now a cold hard patch. No love
for Liffey. It’s very upsetting, Bella.”

 
          
He
felt that Bella had him on a pin, was a curious investigator of his painful
flutterings. But it was not altogether unpleasant. A world that had been black
and white was now transfused with colour: rich butterfly wings, torn but
powerful, rose and fell and rose again. To be free from love was to be free
indeed.

 
          
Bella
laughed.

           
“Happiness!
Love!” she marvelled. “Years since I heard anyone talking like that. What do you
mean?
Neurotic need?
Romantic
fantasy?”

 
          
“Something’s
lost,” he persisted. “Call it what you like. I’m a very simple person, Bella.”

 
          
“Simple,”
he said. “Physical,” of course, was what he meant.
Able to
give and take pleasure, and in particular sexual pleasure.
Difficult
now not to take a masked sexual interest in Bella —she clothed and cosy on his
bed, and he naked in it, and only the thickness of a quilt between them.
Or if not a sexual interest, certainly a feeling that the natural,
ordinary thing to do was to take her in his arms so that their conversation
could continue on its real level, which was without words.
The very
intimacy of their present situation deserved this resolution.

 
          
These
feelings, more to do with a proper sense of what present circumstances
required than anything more permanent, Richard interpreted both as evidence of
his loss of love for Liffey and desire for Bella, and the one reinforced the
other. That, and the shock of the morning, and the evidence of Liffey’s
selfishness, and the sudden fear that she was not what she seemed, and the
shame of his striking her, and the exhaustion of the drive, and the stirring up
of childhood griefs had all combined to trigger off in Richard’s mind such a
wave of fears and resentments and irrational beliefs as would stay with him for
some time. And in the manner of spouses everywhere, he blamed his partner for
his misfortunes and held Liffey responsible for the cold patch in his heart
and the uncomfortably angry and anxious, lively and lustful thoughts in his
mind. And if he did not love her any more, why, then, it was Liffey’s fault
that he did not.

 
          
“All
I can say,”
said
Bella, “is that love or the lack of
it is made responsible for a lot of bad behaviour everywhere, and it’s hard
luck on wives if misreading a train timetable can herald the end of a marriage.
But I will say on your behalf,
Richard, that
Liffey is
very manipulative, and has an emotional and sexual age of twelve, and a rather
spoilt twelve at that. You’ll just have to put your foot down and move back to
London
, and if Liffey wants to stay where she is,
then you can visit her at weekends.”

           
“She wouldn’t like that,” said
Richard.

 
          
“You
might,” said Bella. “What about you?”

 
          
“Spoilt.”
It was a word heard frequently in Richard’s
childhood.

 
          
You
can’t have this, you can’t have that. You don’t want to be spoilt. Or, from his
mother, I’d like you to have this, but your father doesn’t want me to spoil
you. So you can’t have it. It seemed to Richard, hearing Bella say “spoilt”
that Liffey had been the recipient of all the good things he himself had ever
been denied, and he resented it, and the word, as words will, added fuel to his
paranoiac fire, and it burned the more splendidly.

 
          
As
for Bella, who had thrown in the word half on purpose, knowing what combustible
material it was, Bella knew she herself was not spoilt and never had been.
Bella had been obliged to struggle and work for what she now had, as Liffey had
not, and no one had ever helped her, so why should it be different for anyone
else?

 
          
Richard
sat up in bed. His chest was young, broad and strong. The hairs upon it were
soft and sleek and not at all like Ray’s hairy tangle.

 
          
“I
wish I could imagine Liffey and you in bed together,” said Bella. “But I can’t.
Does she know what to do?
Nymphet Liffey!”

 
          
Bella
had gone too far, approached too quickly and too near, scratched Liffey’s
image, which was Richard’s alone to scratch. Whatever was in the air between
herself
and Richard evaporated. Bella went back to her desk
and her typing, and Richard lay back and closed his eyes.

 
          
The
wind rose in the night: two sleeping pills could not wipe out the sound or ease
the sense of danger. Liffey heard a tile fly off the roof, occasionally rain
spattered against the window. She lay awake in a sleeping bag on a mattress on
the floor. The double bed was still stacked in two pieces against the wall.
Liffey ached, body and soul.

 
          
Liffey
got up at three and went downstairs and doused the fire. Perhaps the chimneys
had not been swept for years and so might catch light. Then she would surely
burn to death. Smoke belched out into the room as the hot coals received the
water. Liffey feared she might suffocate but was too frightened to open the
back door, for by letting out the smoke she would let the night in. When she
went upstairs the night had become light and bright again; the moon was large:
the Tor was framed against pale clouds, beautiful.

 
          
Liffey
slept finally and dreamt Tucker was making love to her on a beach, and waves
crashed and roared and stormed and threatened her, so there was only desire, no
fulfilment.

 
          
When
she woke someone was hammering on the front door. It was morning. She crawled
out of the sleeping bag, put on her coat, went downstairs and opened the door.

 
          
It
was Tucker. Liffey stepped back.

 
          
Tucker
stepped inside.

 
          
Tucker
was wearing his boots, over-trousers tucked into them, a torn shirt, baggy army
sweater, and army combat- jacket. His hands were muddy. She did not get as far
as his face.

 
          
“Came
up to see if you were all right,” said Tucker.

 
          
“I’m
fine,” said Liffey. She felt faint—surely because she had got up so suddenly.
She leaned against the wall, heavy-lidded. She remembered her dream.

 
          
“You
don’t look it,” said Tucker. He took her arm; she trembled.

 
          
“How
about a cup of tea?” said
Tucker.
He sat squarely at
the kitchen table and waited.
His house, his land, his
servant.
Liffey found the Earl Grey with some difficulty. Richard and
she rarely drank tea.

 
          
“It’s
very weak,” said Tucker, staring into his cup. She had not been able to find a
saucer and was embarrassed.

 
          
“It’s
that kind of tea,” said Liffey.

 
          
“Too
bad hubby didn’t come home,” said Tucker. “I wouldn’t miss coming home to you.
Do you like this tea?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“I
don’t,” said Tucker. He stood up and came over to stand behind her, pinioning
her arms. “You shouldn’t make tea like that. No one should.”

 
          
His
breath came warm and familiar against her face. She did not doubt but that the
business of the dream would be finished.

           
His arms, narrowing her shoulders,
were so strong there was no point in resisting them. It was his decision, not
hers. She was absolved from responsibility. There was a sense of bargain in the
air; not of mutual pleasure, but of his taking, her consenting. In return for
her consent he offered protection from darkness, storm and fire. This is
country love, thought Liffey. Richard’s is a city love: Richard’s arms are soft
and coaxing, not insistent: Richard strikes a different bargain: mind calls to
mind, word evolves word, response evokes response, has nothing to do with the
relationship between the strong and the weak, as she was weak now, and Tucker
strong upon her, upon the stone floor, her coat fortunately between her bare
skin and its cold rough surface, his clothing chafing and hurting her. Tucker
was powerful, she was not: here was opposite calling to opposite, rough to
smooth, hard to soft, cruel to kind—as if each quality craved the dilution of
its opposite, and out of the struggle to achieve it crested something new. This
is the way the human race multiplies, thought Liffey, satisfied.
Tucker’s way, not Richard’s way.

 
          
But
Liffey’s mind, switched off as a pilot might switch off manual control in
favour of automatic, cut back in again once the decision of abandonment had
been made. Prudence returned, too late. This indeed, thought Liffey, is the
way the human race multiplies, and beat upon Tucker with helpless, hopeless
fists.

 
          
It
was the last of her period. Surely she could not become pregnant at such a time?
But since she had stopped taking the pill her cycle was erratic and random:
what happened hardly deserved the name of “period”: she bled for six days at
uneven
intervals, that was
all. Who was to say what
was happening in her insides? No, surely, surely, it would be all right, must
be all right; even if it wasn’t all right, she would have a termination.
Richard would never know: no one would ever know.