A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (25 page)

‘Are you disapproving?’

‘Not of you, him. And envious. They get everything their own way. God, if I’d been born a man …’

And if you had, Sarah thought, what would you have done? Got yourself some crummy job, because you couldn’t be bothered to train for anything worthwhile. Got married young, just as you did, and for just the same reason, in reverse. It would all have been exactly the same, because you never meant to try, you never believed it could be different, you had no faith in yourself. She squeezed her own arms, tight, as if to make sure that she was still there, Sarah, her own person.

‘Well, anyway,’ Barbara resumed, ‘he’ll feel good and guilty about it, you ought to get some decent presents out of him, to say nothing of living rent free. You should come out of it quite well if you’re clever.’

Unreasoning resentment swept over Sarah. It was one thing for her to look ahead to the inevitable conclusion, quite another for Barbara to take it for granted and talk about it. ‘I’ve only just got into it,’ she said sharply, ‘and I don’t
want
to be clever, and anyway I’m paying part of the rent myself.’

Barbara stared at her. ‘You’re having me on.’ Pause. ‘No, you’re not, are you? God, you must be mad. You get an offer like that on a plate and you turn it down. What’s the matter with you?’

Sarah got up and began to pace around. She felt very
restless and wanted Barbara out of the flat. She would have liked to snap her fingers and magic her sister away. At the same time she felt a sharp little pain of disappointment. ‘I wanted you to understand,’ she said.

Barbara said, ‘Oh, I do, I do.’

‘No, you don’t. You’re being just like Mum, hurray, rich man, let’s take him for all we can get, and serve him right for being a dirty old man, yippee.’ She felt her face growing hot with indignation.

Barbara was unmoved. It might have been one of their childhood rows all over again, for it followed the same pattern: Sarah losing her temper over the latest damaged toy, the untidy room, the spilt paint; Barbara shrugging it off as nothing. She had always been able to get under Sarah’s skin and provoke her as no one else could. Now she said calmly, ‘Why all the fuss? He wants something he’s not entitled to, why shouldn’t he pay for it? That’s perfectly fair. You’re the one who has to be tucked away, waiting for visits, hiding in corners. He’s not offering you anything permanent, he’s just wasting your time while he gets the best of both worlds. Well, the best of both worlds is expensive. He knows that, he
expects
to pay for it.
You’re
the one who’s not being realistic. You’re doing
him
a favour, not the other way round. Can’t you get that into your head?’

Sarah said stubbornly, ‘I don’t see it like that.’ But she wasn’t sure how she
did
see it; Barbara’s words were too close to the truth. She felt uncomfortable, and Manson, surrounded by family, seemed far away. Already he wasn’t here when she needed him, and for the first time in her life she had no one else.

Barbara, with uncanny precision, went on, ‘Well, how about the others? That student’s no use, he’s penniless, but the other one, the rich one, what’s his name, Geoff. How come you let him lend you the car? Now that’s really something, but you don’t mind accepting that.’

‘That’s different,’ said Sarah mechanically, but meaning it.

‘Is it? Well, this little affair could mess it all up, have you thought about that? You could actually marry Geoff, you know. My God, that family of his, they’re rolling in it, aren’t they? If you throw all that over to have an affair with your boss, at least you deserve a bit of compensation. That’s all I’m getting at and it’s just common sense.’

Sarah said, ‘There’s no question of marrying Geoff. We’ve never discussed it.’

Barbara laughed. ‘Well, if you ask me, a man who’ll lend you his car is more than half-way there. He only needs a little nudge. And I bet you haven’t even tried.’

‘That’s right, I haven’t. Oh, do drop it, Barbara. We’re not even in love. It just isn’t like that.’

Barbara opened her eyes wide. ‘Love? What’s that got to do with it?’

* * *

‘They’re at the station.’ Cassie put the phone down, and Manson got up, a shade reluctantly, she thought.

‘All right. I’ll go and fetch them.’

She watched him go down the drive to the car. She felt suddenly uneasy. Gavin’s voice on the phone, the oddly chosen words: ‘Prue’s not feeling too well, ma’am. And she’s acting up a bit, too. So if you could make allowances, I’d be obliged.’ She liked the ‘ma’am’, though he had never used it before, and it sounded as if he were copying someone in a film. And she liked the blend of ancient and modern in his speech. But the meaning alarmed her. There was something about his voice and the words he selected that made her think she was being warned—even alerted—more for her own good than out of conjugal consideration for Prue. A sudden attack of nerves made her shiver; she poured another glass of sherry and drank it slowly, trying to calm herself. She had always thought that he saw Prue in a very clear light; in
fact it seemed a marriage remarkably without illusion on both sides. But it was still unnerving to have this brought out in the open, and so abruptly, in the form of a warning. She knew Prue’s faults: that she was selfish and greedy and spoilt, that she liked her own way. To some extent she and Peter must accept responsibility for all that. But she was also tough and independent and honest, and for these more attractive qualities they could also take credit. Cassie felt very detached about her daughter, observing her as another woman whom she happened to have studied at close quarters. Yet there was also an element of self-identification which she would have found hard to explain. She was not even sure if it showed. The boys were more her sons than Prue was her daughter, but Prue could have been herself-when-young, and for that she felt special affection. She remembered that when she was pregnant the first time she had wanted a daughter and the miracle of getting what she wanted had quite eclipsed the miracle of birth.

She checked that all was well in the kitchen and returned to the window, wanting to see the actual arrival of the car: it was part of the ceremony of the day. When it came she watched them all get out: Peter, grey-haired and slightly stooping (should she tell him about that?); Gavin, dark and dramatic in eccentric clothes (she pushed away the memories—and, Oh, Prue, did I ever tell you I understand? No, I didn’t, but I do, so well); and Prue, the last, and slow, weighed down with the child. She moved heavily; she seemed to Cassie to have put on an astonishing amount of weight. She felt the weight in her own body; the identification was so acute that she even glanced down at her own ankles to see if they had swelled. It feels awful, she thought, bloody awful, but it’s worth it; did I ever tell you? Had there ever been a chance, had there ever been time to talk, to form the close, warm conspiracy of pregnant women? No, and with Prue’s
reserve there probably never would be. It was unfair. My child, and we have so much in common. The one time I can be some help to you, if only you would let me. She was at the door.

‘Darling. Happy birthday.’

‘Hullo, Mummy.’

Kisses. Pale, drawn face. The child pressing between them.

‘Hullo, Gavin.’

‘Hi.’

He looked so familiar it was ridiculous. Peter followed, face blank, in retreat. She nearly greeted him too, as if he had been away a long time.

‘Sherry?’ she said brightly.

‘Thanks.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Or would you rather have Scotch?’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘Mummy, can I have tomato juice or something?’

Manson poured the drinks, taking over. Cassie sat and watched her daughter, her son-in-law. She reached out a hand to the parcel, wrapped and beautiful, on a shelf.

‘Darling. Do you want your present now?’

‘All right.’ Prue was languid. Cassie felt a stab of anxiety. She was so shuttered, so enclosed, such an interior person.

‘You can have it later if you like.’

‘No. I’ll have it now.’ She took it and began tearing at the wrapping, casually, not appreciating the care that had gone into it, but also without eagerness, as if presents happened every day, as if they were a chore. Manson handed drinks, saying, ‘Hope you like it,’ but without conviction. What was wrong with him? Cassie felt waves of uneasiness; all Gavin’s words flooded back; the whole scene was odd, out of gear. Unreal, as if they were all drunk.

Prue had got through to the box. She opened it. ‘Oh God. Look at this.’ She showed it to Gavin.

‘Wow.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Prue said, in a funny, repressed little voice. She took out the card, read it, and put it back. ‘Thank you.’

‘Christ, aren’t you lucky,’ Gavin said, oddly hearty.

‘Yes.’ She looked slowly from one parent to the other. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

Cassie said, unable to stop herself, ‘Aren’t you going to put it on?’

‘What? Oh yes, yes of course.’ Slowly, almost clumsily, Prue fastened the bracelet on her wrist and turned it in the light. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said again. ‘But it must have cost the earth.’ She looked at her father. ‘You really shouldn’t have done it, you know.’

Manson drank instead of replying; Cassie said, ‘But you like it?’

‘I can’t help liking it.’

‘Well, then. That’s splendid.’

Prue turned the bracelet round and round. ‘Must be my lucky day,’ she said.

* * *

It was dark in the lane on the way to the station and there was no one about. He hit her systematically, holding her by the wrist and slapping her across the face, to and fro, over and over again, as he had done before, only this time his full weight was behind the blow. She shut her eyes tight and screamed—not loudly, for help, but almost against her will. His fist caught her mouth and a tooth loosened sickeningly. She stopped screaming. The night was very still and then the only sounds she could hear were his blows to her face and his tortured breathing, curiously similar to making love. She was panting in exactly the same way.

There was a sharp, blinding pain as he caught the bone of her nose and she felt, or heard, it crack. The divisions between her senses were becoming blurred. Tears of pain began
to flow down her cheeks without effort and she felt sick: she sagged at the knees and could not stand up. She drooped till she was almost hanging bodily from the hand he had locked round her wrist. She had expected him to call her names as well but he did not and his silence terrified her more than anything, making the blows seem more methodical and deadly than ever before. She suddenly wondered if he meant to kill her and started to struggle with what strength she had left. The next moment she was lying on the ground and he was kicking her. Too weak to scream any more she could only fold her hands over her stomach, saying faintly, ‘Not my baby.’ Her last conscious awareness of anything beyond the red hot circle of pain that seemed to enclose her, in which she seemed to be endlessly revolving, was of car head-lamps moving on the main road a hundred yards away and gently touching the tops of the bushes above her head.

* * *

‘So I came to you.’ He walked up and down; he could not keep still. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do.’ Then as if to amend his tactlessness: ‘I had to see you. There’s no one else I can talk to.’ He promptly went through the story again, incredulously, in a state of shock, as if he even did not realise he was repeating himself.

Listening, even a second time, did not make Sarah understand. ‘All day there was something in the air … you could tell something was wrong … she wasn’t herself … ghastly … dropping little hints … looking at me to see if I was frightened, playing with me. She saved it up till dinner. Oh, she was drunk, of course, she’d had too much wine but oh, God …’

Sarah got up, put her arms round him, said, ‘Come and sit down.’ He slumped on the sofa and she poured him another drink and held his hand while he drank it. She could not drink herself. She felt she was on duty, a nurse, obliged to
remain soberly in charge of the patient. Her time would come later, perhaps.

He let out a groan. ‘God, Cassie’s face.’

‘Should you have left her? I mean should you really be here, not with her?’ She thought her own sense of reponsibility, her bitter acceptance of total personal blame was the most heavily adult feeling she had ever had. She did not need to say, ‘It’s all my fault’; a statement usually made to elicit denial, in any case. She picked up her burden voluntarily and in silence.

‘Oh yes. She wanted to be alone, to think. She said so. She said if I stayed we’d only spend the night talking and there was plenty of time for that. So I left.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes.

Sarah thought she could not bear the feeling of pity that swamped her. Was this how mothers were supposed to feel? A dreadful engulfing sensation of concern and responsibility, that no one else could help their actions and she must rescue them all or have the pain transferred to herself: she breathed it in the air like gas. Pity for Prue, to be so hurt that she wanted to hurt, pity for Cassie who deserved none of it, pity for Manson, sitting spent and grey-faced in her living-room, caught in a situation he had never meant to create and which had accelerated rapidly out of control. But she had not wanted to feel pity for him.

‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ she said softly. ‘You’re worn out. It won’t look so bad in the morning.’

He opened his eyes, said alarmingly, ‘Maybe it’s all for the best. A fresh start …’

‘You know you don’t mean that.’ She found herself trembling. ‘Now come on. Come to bed. You need a good night’s sleep.’

‘Who says I don’t mean it?’ He sounded suddenly belligerent, reached for his glass, found it empty again. ‘Oh Sarah, Sarah.’ He buried his face against her. ‘You’re so good to me.
I need you. Don’t leave me, Sarah.’ He was suddenly very drunk.

She held him and stroked his hair; she felt about a hundred years old. ‘Where would I go?’ she said gently.

* * *

After he had gone Cassie thought that it might not have happened at all. She could be still waiting for them all to arrive, or it might have been a play she had watched on TV. She wandered over to the mirror and looked at herself, touching her face. She looked the same. She felt the same. Maybe she
was
the same. Maybe in the morning it would not have happened: with Peter beside her, yawning, waiting for tea and the paper, she would never have heard the ugly words because Prue would not have said them, would not have denounced her father to her mother and been dragged away screaming and crying by Gavin, who looked as if he wanted to murder her. There wouldn’t be much sleep in that household tonight, Cassie thought, almost with detachment. Not that she expected much herself. For Peter she wasn’t sure; the girl might soothe him. No, Sarah. Already she was falling into the humiliating trap, the classic way other people said
the girl, that woman
, the anonymous venom. She did not want to be like that. Sarah Francis: she had a name. She was not
the girl
. She had feelings and friends and presumably parents; she was a person who could cry or have a headache or feel cold waiting for a bus. And she was probably in love with Peter, for what other motive could she have? He was not a rich man and, though attractive, far from glamorous. So she must care for him. The world was not divided into loving wives and evil mistresses; the divine plan or whatever it might be was not nearly so simple. And she herself was the last person who could afford to feel smug.