Breaking the Chain (28 page)

‘Duncan?’ she called from the top of the stairs. No answer. She went down into the kitchen. He was bent over the stove, lighting the fire. ‘Where’s my trunk?’ she asked him.

He wouldn’t look at her. ‘I g-got rid of i-it,’ he said.

‘Yes, but where?’

‘In the p-paddock’.

‘Outside? But it’ll get ruined in the rain!’

‘No,’ Duncan said, ‘it’s b-b-b-burnt.’

‘What?’ Phoebe stared at him in horror. ‘You burnt my trunk? But what did you do with all my things?’ Duncan didn’t answer. ‘You didn’t burn them all up too?’ Duncan was still silent. ‘You did! How
could
you?’ She looked down at him wildly. ‘But it belonged to my father. He had it at university and I kept all the things he ever gave me in it. All my old photographs … and letters … and GCE certificates … and my teddy bear … all my past … everything! How could you destroy that when it means so much to me?
How could you?’
She ran at him with fists flailing, meaning to hurt him in any way that she could. Duncan reached out and imprisoned her right hand easily in his own, but in trying to grab the other, he caught her an accidental glancing blow just on the ridge of her left eyebrow. She gasped with pain and then, wrenching herself free from him she ran back towards the stairs, followed by a prancing, barking Diggory who thought it was a game.

‘I hate you,’ she screamed. Then she slammed the door at the bottom of the stairs and stumbled up to the bedroom.

Fay was happy to be back in her own home again. Living in someone else’s space always felt like camping, and she had been terrified that Jack would break some priceless artefact in spite of
her precautionary measures. She was glad to distance herself from the flat for other reasons as well. It brought back too many memories; it made her look to the past instead of to the future. Jack also seemed pleased to be home again and in a familiar routine. His nanny came daily and took him to nursery school or swimming or junior judo. He was also going regularly to the speech therapist that Phoebe had told her about, and it really did seem to be working. Things, Fay thought, were settling down nicely. Then Phoebe had telephoned in a great state of upset, saying that she couldn’t stand living with Duncan for a moment longer and could she please stay with them for a while? Better and better!

Fay made up a bed for her in the spare room and moved clothes to make spaces in the wardrobe and chests of drawers. Then she went out into the garden with Jack to pick a little posy of spring flowers, winter jasmine, celandines and primroses, for Phoebe’s dressing table. Fay wondered what had happened and whether Phoebe had walked out on Duncan for good, or was just taking a break from him. Either way, she sounded as though she needed cosseting. Fay planned to cook her special meals in the evenings and generally give her a much-needed boost.

When Phoebe arrived, in mid-afternoon, Fay was shocked by her appearance. She came into the hall with a suitcase in each hand and smiled weakly at her.

‘Whatever happened to you?’ Fay asked.

‘Duncan hit me,’ Phoebe said.

‘Duncan did?’ Fay was astonished. ‘You poor little thing, but that’s awful.’ She hesitated and then held her arms out. Phoebe came forward gratefully and they hugged.

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ Phoebe said in muffled heartfelt tones.

‘Stay as long as you like,’ Fay said, holding her at arm’s length and studying her with concern. ‘We’ll look after you, won’t we, Jack?’ Jack had come halfway downstairs, until his face was just above Phoebe’s.

‘You’ve got a big ow,’ he observed.

‘Yes,’ Phoebe said. ‘It’s a black eye.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a p-purple and yellow one.’

‘Jack kiss it better?’ Fay suggested.

Jack knelt down and put his hands through the banisters. Then he pulled Phoebe’s face carefully towards him, holding her cheeks in his palms, before planting a soft, wet kiss on her swollen eyelid. ‘All right now,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Thank you, Jack,’ Phoebe said, smiling up at him. ‘That makes me feel very all right.’

‘You’re honoured,’ Fay said. ‘I think it means you’re accepted.’

Phoebe stayed with Fay in London for most of March, and during that time she did not get in touch with Duncan once. At first she slept late every morning and stayed in her room alone after Fay had gone to work, reading Fay’s books and some more of Nancy’s diaries. She had now read all the continuous years which formed a complete record of Nancy’s life from 25 to 41 years old, and had started on the disconnected part thereafter. There were a lot of years missing between 1962 and the time of her death in summer ‘91. This was the period when her affair with Peter had faltered and died, and she had been alone. Phoebe wondered if she had been too depressed to record her daily doings, or just too busy.

In the evenings after Jack had had his bath and a story, and gone to sleep, Phoebe talked to Fay. She told her everything that had happened, and was comforted by Fay’s determination to see things entirely from her point of view, and not try to play devil’s advocate for Duncan. In time she would be able to admit that he had points on his side as well, but at the moment she needed a sympathetic partisan like Fay. Fay reassured Phoebe that her fear of AIDS was in all likelihood unfounded, and that in any case there was nothing to be done at once, as it would be two months at the very least before a test would show a correct result.

Gradually the swelling on Phoebe’s eye went down and the bruise faded. She met friends of Fay’s and became included in her social circle. She was at first charmed by the ease with which she was accepted, and then worried about being a parasite.

‘I ought to be paying for my keep,’ she said rather desperately, ‘and rent as well.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Fay said easily. ‘I’ve got to buy food for myself and Jack anyway. One more makes very little difference.’

‘It’s not right, though,’ Phoebe insisted. ‘It makes me feel uncomfortable.’

‘So why not get a job?’ Fay suggested.

‘What here, in London?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well I hadn’t really planned on staying that long. I mean, I always thought I’d get a job in the country. London isn’t really me,’ but even as she said it Phoebe realized that it was no longer entirely true. Fay’s part of London was different from Rick’s. It was more like a village but with all the advantages of the city. There were endless things to do and places to discover. There were interesting people to talk to and walks to be taken. There was even a garden with a rose arbour to sit in, and grass to lie on in summer. True, all the windows were lockable and there was a security system on the doors, but you could get used to that in time. Phoebe was even getting daring about driving around locally. On that first day when she had arrived with the blue Polo overloaded with her possessions, she had been terrified by the traffic and weak with relief when she had eventually discovered Fay’s road and a parking space close by.

‘I’ve got a friend who’s a lecturer at UC,’ Fay said. ‘I could ask him if he knows of anything suitable. You were in a biology department before, weren’t you?’

‘Zoology,’ Phoebe said.

‘Of course there may be nothing,’ Fay said, ‘but it’s worth a try.’

Fay was as intrigued by Nancy’s diaries as Phoebe had been, and interested to find out more about Hope and Peter’s past.

‘It explains such a lot,’ she kept saying, looking up from the pages. ‘Conrad and Duncan and the rest ought to be told about it, then they’d understand their parents so much better. Have
you read the unbelievable bit about Peter offering to leave Hope and marry Nancy? No wonder Hope didn’t care about Nancy’s death!’

‘Read it out,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’d like to hear it again.’

‘Sunday, 15 April 1962. A beautiful spring day. Drove out of London with P. and continued westwards until we found a secluded country pub. Warm enough to sit out in the gardens. Found a lovely spot by a little stream with a chiff-chaff shouting from a nearby hawthorn bush (no swallows yet), and had a ploughman’s lunch. P. was unusually subdued, and I was all prepared to agree with him that our affair is going nowhere and perhaps it should stop altogether. Then he suddenly took both my hands in his across the table and asked me to marry him! I was never more astonished and I’m afraid I burst out laughing. When I asked him ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ he told me that life with H. was getting ever more intolerable. They’ve got two boys at home now that Herry has been expelled from his boarding school, and Brendan refused to be sent there. Apparently they are at each other’s throats most of the time (there’s only a year between them) and they’re picking on Roderick whenever he’s there. So P. thinks that ‘Divorce is the only answer.’ I’ve had some backhanded compliments in my time, but this one takes the biscuit! It doesn’t seem to have occurred to P. that the family unrest is of his own making. He also appears not to have considered how much worse it must be for H., who is there all the time, and resolutely trying to keep her music going, despite all other commitments! P. himself is hardly ever at home – he’s always away on some ploy or another. He seems to do exactly as he pleases without any regard to his duty to his family. How else would he be able to get away at weekends to see me? He’s undoubtedly the most selfish person I’ve ever met, but he gets away with it because he makes people laugh. Beware of humour – it’s a smoke screen for ruthless egotism. So, of course, I declined his offer and instead of accepting defeat gracefully he flounced into a tremendous huff and we drove back to The Smoke in almost total
silence. Later on – alone again – I felt despairing about life in general. I remembered the years when I was
desperate
to marry him, when I would have given anything to hear him say the words he used today. I believe the gods do it on purpose. They seem to take a malicious pleasure in granting requests – their way – to catch you out. I’ve got what I longed for, but it’s too late. It has no value any more.’

Duncan woke too early as usual and lay restlessly in the hour before dawn, trying not to think. It was impossible. The images came to mind anyway; a jumbled procession of all the humiliating, demoralizing incidents which had ever happened to him, one after the other. He remembered as a child making a pipe rack for his father out of two pieces of plywood and a pair of wooden bobbins, and how he had cut the holes with such care and then wrapped it as a proper brown-paper parcel, with string and sealing wax. He had waited with such anticipation for Peter to come home and had stayed up late to see him, but when his father had finally arrived, he had thrown himself down into an easy chair with a tumbler of whisky and had carelessly tossed Duncan’s parcel onto the sideboard, where it had remained unopened for three days.

Duncan shifted impatiently trying to get comfortable. That had happened nearly forty years ago! What possible importance had it now? But the parade went on. He remembered Herry at 8, telling him the facts of life and roaring with laughter at the 12-year-old Duncan’s disgust and disbelief. He remembered being made to read the lesson in chapel at school and being utterly unable to get a single word out. He remembered Conrad, two years younger but catching him up academically and always there, on his heels, superior in every way. He remembered taking a special girl out (a musician, like Hope) and not daring to kiss her, and at the end of that unsuccessful evening, her telling him that he was about as stimulating as an autistic rabbit. He remembered his father saying that Oxford or Cambridge were the only universities worth going to. He remembered sitting in the exam room at his second-rate horticultural college and staring blankly at an examination paper for the full three hours. He remembered being officially in charge of a gang of County Council men planting shrubs by the roadside, and how, when he had arrived a quarter of an hour
late, he had found that they had all gone off and started without him; he being entirely superfluous. Duncan shook his head. His thoughts were like flies, plaguing him.

So he thought instead about his mother, but this memory went back even earlier. He had so much wanted to emulate her musical abilities, so he had screwed up his courage and done something that was strictly forbidden to all the children. He had opened Hope’s viola case, taken out her precious instrument and tried to play it. He discovered that he couldn’t hold it up and get his fingers round it the way she did, so he stood it instead with its back against him as he knelt on the floor. Then he could press his fingers onto the strings whilst he supported the instrument against his chest, and saw away with the bow in his dominant left hand like a miniature cello. He was triumphant in having solved the problem in a manner unique to himself. His mother had heard him almost at once, of course, and had rushed in and snatched the viola from him. It wasn’t that he minded her being cross, he welcomed the special attention. It was the
way
she was cross that he had never forgotten. She had looked at him pityingly and said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Duncan, even you must know that’s not the correct way to hold it! I’m afraid you’ll never make a musician.’

Well, he hadn’t made one, had he? He hadn’t become anything. He and education had never had a meeting of minds. He hadn’t been able to see the point of it much of the time, so he had muddled along, left with no qualifications to speak of, and eventually found work. He had got through a lot of menial jobs in his time. He couldn’t even remember them all. He had always tried to model himself on his father and adopt his assertive approach to life, but he had come badly unstuck. They had said he was toffee-nosed, standoffish, and so sharp he’d cut himself, when all he had been trying to convey was a passable, though false, sense of self-assurance, an ability to be self-contained, and a modest degree of wit. He gave up on the wit very early. He hadn’t got the speed of thought or the delivery. No one ever understood him, and just assumed him to be taking the piss. His tightly crafted veneer of self-assurance in conjunction with his stammer and old-fashioned posh accent, was mistaken
for arrogance and mocked mercilessly. There was nothing else to fall back upon but his capacity for solitude. He became self-employed.