Splitting (8 page)

“Clive,” chided Susan, “don’t be absurd! We did have a certain rapprochement for a time, and some good talks. It was wonderful and I don’t regret it. But it just wasn’t the stuff of which futures-together are made. Can’t you get back together with Natalie? I’m sure she loves you. It’s all such a great fuss about nothing. You really ought to think about your children.” When Clive wouldn’t leave, saying he had nowhere to go, no home any more, she put her case more plainly. “Please don’t pester me like this, Clive. It’s thanks to you and your indiscretions I’ve lost my husband, and Roland now has to make do without his father. I’ve been treated so badly. Please don’t make it worse. You men are unbelievable.”

Clive took a bed-sitting room in town and hung about in the supermarket, hoping to catch sight of Susan. But Susan changed shops, and blamed Clive for that, too. Now her marketing cost more.

“It’s really hard to take men with moustaches seriously!” said Susan to Lady Rice, meeting her in the greengrocer’s. “Yet Clive seems bent on serious self-destruct. Natalie is being really horrible to me: she cuts me dead in the street: you’d think she’d at least try to stay out of my way, do her marketing mid-afternoon, not mid-morning. It’s not my fault her husband’s in love with me. She ought to have looked after him better: she’s completely frigid sexually. Rosamund Plaidy was treating her. I thought she was on my side but when it comes to it she’s as cold as you are, Angelica. You’d all rather have a grievance than a friend. Why doesn’t Natalie just ask Clive back and be nice to him? He’d soon get over it. Women make such a fuss about this kind of thing. And so shortsighted of her! If Natalie and I go to the same party and she. sees me, she just walks out. It’s really stupid: people will stop inviting her if she keeps making scenes.”

And Susan was of course right. Susan always got asked out and Natalie didn’t. The wronged make depressing companions.

“And Rosamund’s another one,” said Susan. “She acts strangely towards me, too. It’s unprofessional of her.”

“But you’re no longer her patient, Susan,” said Lady Rice.

Susan enthused over the quality and color of local apples, and the greengrocer’s wife, with adoring eyes, offered her a bagful free.

Susan accepted.

“But Rosamund’s such a gossip,” said Susan. “All that silly stuff about your having an oestrogen implant, when we all know how much Edwin wants a baby. Remember how he wept when I lost mine? You and Edwin were so good to me, I’ll never forget that. You’re like sister and brother to me. But Rosamund—why is she the way she is about me?”

“I think she believes Roland is really Lambert’s son,” said Lady Rice. “Not Humphrey’s at all.”

Susan turned pale. The color drained from her face. She looked quite gaunt and nearer forty than thirty. She left the shop. Lady Rice followed.

“Angelica, you are to tell everyone that’s ridiculous,” said Susan. “It’s obvious just to look at Roland that he’s Humphrey’s. Roland has inherited all Humphrey’s talents and qualities, thank God. Poor Humphrey; he was emotionally crippled, like so many English men of his generation. But that leaves the genes okay, doesn’t it? I never had anything to do with Lambert, though he was always a little bit in love with me, so it wasn’t for want of asking! Men get so obsessional, don’t they! And so full of fantasies. They’ll always claim you’ve been to bed with them when you haven’t; when what’s happened is they’ve tried but you said no. No wonder Rosamund is losing her grip. Of course Lambert’s saying the same thing about you, Angelica, do you know that? What a problem village life can be!”

And, apparently quite recovered, Susan went on down the village street, basket over arm, strong stride, fair hair shining, exotic yet domestic; with all the confidence of her own goodness and likeability.

If excited voices clamored within Lady Rice, she did not hear them. She made her deafness her strength.

L
ADY RICE CALLED UPON
Rosamund. It seemed prudent. “You and Lambert? I never said any such thing,” said Rosamund to Lady Rice. “Susan, or the Great Adulteress of Barley, as some call her, just enjoys stirring up mischief. Roland is indeed in all probability Lambert’s child, but fortunately Lambert has gone right off Susan since she had her moments of passion with Edwin. Don’t look so stricken: I’m not saying for one moment Susan and Edwin did have an affair, just that Lambert, who tends to be paranoid, believes it, so what’s the difference? It suits me that he does believe it.”

Lambert was back home again with Rosamund. Susan-damage, as Rosamund observed, had so far been restricted to three households, four children—two of hers, two of Natalie’s—and one baby, who never got born. The village had calmed; gossip was stilled. Rosamund was beginning to build up her medical practice again: mostly in the Estate where the humble lived. She had more patients with varicose veins, fewer with emotional problems.

“By the way, Angelica,” said Rosamund, “I’m pregnant again. Don’t you think it’s time you and Edwin thought of starting a family?”

A voice sounded tinnily in Her head: “Yes, yes, yes,” but she ignored it.

“I don’t think so,” said Lady Rice quickly. Lady Rice found herself frightened of change, of pain, of swelling up, of sharing her body with another personality. As well grow a monster as a baby. Lady Rice was a little person, with narrow hips. Edwin was big. If the baby inherited Edwin’s size, how would it get out? These things hadn’t occurred to her before. Maternity, to Lady Rice in her discouraged state, seemed a very bad idea indeed.

How quickly time passed: lava steamed and sizzled in the volcano’s crater but didn’t quite boil over. Rice Court went on the Heritage brochure as a three-starred family outing. Over the weekends visitors could be counted in thousands. Lady Rice was kept busy. English Heritage took over the day-to-day running of the place, but Edwin liked Lady Rice to keep her hands on the reins, so she did. A small zoo was built: pythons, which the children could hold, were a great attraction. There was a monkey enclosure where if you wore laced shoes you were advised to remove them and put on free canvas pull-ons with the Cowarth crest on them which you could then take home. Lady Rice’s idea, and most successful.

“Do come to Roland’s birthday party!” said Susan to Sir Edwin and Lady Rice. “He’ll be four on Saturday. I’ve asked Rosamund and Lambert to come. They just have to get over this silly quarrel with me. I asked Humphrey but he says no. He’s much too uncivilized. Even if he can’t make an effort for me, you’d think he’d do it for his own son, even do a few things about the house. The boiler’s leaking again. But no. People round here are so rancorous!”

S
USAN HAD MADE THE
garden pretty for the party. It was her gift to make things pretty. Ropes of colored lights twisted through the flower beds. Little iced cakes were charmingly arranged; there was champagne. Susan had forgotten to provide fruit drinks for the children but they made do perfectly well with water. Lady Rice observed to her husband that it didn’t seem so much a children’s party as one to celebrate Susan’s own continuing childhood.

“You women are so catty about poor Susan,” said Edwin. “You must have your scapegoat, I suppose.”

Rosamund also declined to come to the party, though all those of note and influence in the neighborhood were attending. It seemed ungenerous of her to stay away, and cutting off her nose to spite her face, as Susan pointed out. Rosamund surely needed to make friends and influence people: to build up her practice. Lambert came though. Lambert wore a shirt unbuttoned to the waist. A piece of string held his trousers up. His shoes were unlaced. But his disorder seemed born of triumph, not tragedy. His eyes sparkled. He was almost manic. He burst into the garden with a hoot and a song, and a beating of fists against his hairy chest.

“Are you okay, Lambert?” asked Lady Rice, startled.

“I’m more than okay,” said Lambert. “I left home today. I’ve left

Rosamund. You try living with a doctor!”

And he held Lady Rice by her two shoulders, and stared into her eyes beseechingly.

“Everyone deserves happiness, don’t they? I’m a creative person. I can’t be put into a mould; I can’t live with it.”

Well, it was true that everyone had been saying that Rosamund had tried to pressure Lambert into respectability, to make him look and act like a husband and father when actually he was a writer and a genius.

“Rosamund is destroying me,”, said Lambert. “Susan can’t cope here on her own; she gets lonely and frightened. She’s asked me to move in with her. I’ve got a play going on at the National Theatre.”

“I’m so pleased for you,” murmured Lady Rice, while she tried to collate so much new information all at once. “Fame and fortune are on the way.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” said Lambert. “I only care about

Susan.”

Susan was laughing and chattering amongst her guests. She held Roland’s hand. She had dressed the child in the party attire of a hundred years ago—white
broderie anglaise
flounces, leggings, black patent-leather shoes. He was a quiet, passive child, and just as well.

“What does Rosamund say?” asked Angelica. “Does she mind?”

“Rosamund doesn’t know,” said Lambert. “I want you to break it to her, Angelica. You’re her friend. Rosamund will get over losing me ever so quickly, you’d be surprised. I’m just a handy accessory it’s convenient to have around. Rosamund doesn’t like me; she just wants to own me, and punish me because I’m an artist. Whatever was ever between us is over. But Susan—Susan knows what love really is.”

Susan saw Lambert, waved excitedly, and ran towards him. She was wearing large clumpy sneakers beneath her white floaty dress. Rosamund had told Angelica that Susan suffered from painful corns. “Wild man,” Susan said to Lambert, running her finger over his stubbly chin. “Wild man! Wild animal! I can see I’ll have to tame you, groom you a little. Where are your things? Don’t say you came with nothing!”

Lambert roared like a lion. People turned and stared. Lambert was certainly livelier in Susan’s company than in Rosamund’s; or perhaps sudden success had gone to his head. Little Roland was frightened and cried. Susan squeezed the child’s hand to allay his fears. Perhaps she squeezed too hard because Roland let out a sharp yell between tears. Lambert picked him up and tossed him in the air and caught him.

“Don’t cry!” he said. “Don’t cry. Daddy’s here!” But the child just howled louder.

“Don’t say that!” hissed Susan. “You are not his father!” And such was the force of her protest that Lambert’s wildness drained. “Sorry,” he said, quite mildly.

When Lady Rice had recovered a little, she trailed Lambert into the wooded area where once the railway track ran. Susan was attending to her guests.

“Lambert,” said Lady Rice, “what about your children? Had you thought? And isn’t Rosamund pregnant?”

“When you speak to my wife,” said Lambert, “tell her I advise her to get an abortion. That is if she thinks she can’t cope. It’s her decision.

But really Rosamund can cope with anything the world throws her.

But I’m the kind of guy who needs a real woman to look after.”

“Like Susan?”

“Like Susan. Angelica, I’m going to make up for all the unhappiness of her past. Humphrey, Clive, Edwin: they’ve all been vile to her. Keep it a secret, Angelica, but Susan’s pregnant.”

“Well,” said Lady Rice, “I’m not going to tell Rosamund a thing, and that’s that. Do it yourself.”

Lambert stalked off. Lady Rice sat down on a fallen tree trunk, which Susan had not had cleared because it looked so romantic. It had come down in a high wind, six months ago. The next morning Edwin had gone down to look at the fallen tree; he’d called Susan and offered to send a couple of men to winch it up and away, but Susan had declined. Lady Rice wondered why Susan found a stricken tree so romantic. Then she saw what anyone else would see at once: that the ground on the far side of the trunk was green, smooth, soft and mossy. The stream burbled by; very private, very secluded. Yes, it was ever so romantic. It would do very well for an assignation, or two, or three, or hundreds. A changing verdant backdrop: ferns and leaves. And first the blackberry flowers, and then the berries. How pleasantly the seasons would change.

“Hi, Lady Rice,” said Jelly. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Jelly White. What you said to Lambert just now might have sounded rude, but you have my total support. Indeed, you can hold me responsible for saying what had to be said.”

Lambert walked towards Lady Rice; helped her to her feet. “I see your point,” said Lambert. “I should tell my wife myself.” They walked together back into the garden. Lambert held Lady Rice’s elbow, had to steady her. “Are you okay?” asked Lambert.

“I thought I heard voices in my head,” said Lady Rice. “I expect it’s the hot weather.” He stopped. She stopped. Lady Rice buried her head in the hairy gap between shirt buttons and shirt buttonholes. The chest smelt pleasantly of scented maleness: he might be dishevelled and distraught but he had washed. No doubt Susan had insisted. No genius of hers could continue to suffer from
nostalgie de la boue.
Rosamund might encourage it: she would not.

Edwin turned up out of nowhere and said, “You two seem to be having an intense conversation.”

Lady Rice pulled back from Lambert’s chest and said, boldly and angrily, “Don’t you ‘you two’ me, Edwin.”

Edwin looked taken aback.

“That’s right,” said Jelly White. “You stand up to him, Lady Rice!”

“When you forget, and speak naturally, Angelica,” said Edwin, “it’s with the accent of the streets: common, that is to say.” Lambert said, “For an alleged gentleman you can be very ungentlemanly, Edwin.”

Edwin said, “You could make my wife pregnant as well, Plaidy, only fortunately your wife’s rendered her sterile.”

Lambert said, “I never saw you as a family man, Edwin. Too many drugs. But I understand your problem. You do need an heir to inherit the estate.”

Edwin said, “At least I have something to be inherited,” wit or repartee not being his forte, but by that time Lady Rice, poor thing, unaccustomed to such open hostility in a social setting, had fainted again.