Two Loves (20 page)

‘I'm not sure. Anyway, at the moment Daniel, the man in question, has to come first because he's had a breakdown and needs all my attention. I haven't many girlfriends either, though I'm very fond of Ingrid, the girl who called here to see you.'

‘Ah yes, Ben's girlfriend. Or is that over? She seemed to think it might be over. He hadn't left her his address, I think.'

‘Yes, it's probably over. And since he doesn't seem interested in carrying on with the book now, I thought you might be willing to let Ingrid take it on. She's a journalist as well – that's how I got to know her. She came to the schoolhouse to do an article about me, about my painting.'

‘I liked Ingrid well enough, but I think I'd be able to talk more freely to Ben.'

‘I don't think he's to be trusted, though. He gave up this job as soon as he thought he wasn't going to get enough money from it, which seems pretty rotten. And he's been pretty rotten to Ingrid as well.'

Erica seemed reluctant to let Ben slip out of her life. He had brought her expensive flowers from Harrods; dusky black tulips the last time he'd come, saying they'd remind her of passion, get her in the right mood. All the same … ‘Well, I'm ready to settle for Ingrid if you're ready to give me permission to use the poems.'

‘Oh, I am. And I was hoping perhaps you'd suggest paying me a certain amount as well.'

‘I'd already thought of that. We'll have a contract drawn up. Ben's agent was going to see to that, now we'll have to think of someone else. I wish I had some champagne to celebrate our agreement. Haven't had any champagne for ages.' Erica was sure Ben would have brought champagne. ‘When will Ingrid be able to start? I'm longing to get going. I really do need some money before next winter.'

‘She's coming back from a holiday in Italy on Saturday and she'll ring you. She's anxious to start too.'

‘Where in Italy was she making for?'

‘I'm not sure. Her air ticket was to Pisa.'

‘I lived in Italy for several years. It was just before I met Anthony.'

Erica seemed suddenly tired so that Rosamund offered to make some tea. She'd bought a cherry cake at the corner shop.

She was pleased to find the kitchen tidier and cleaner than before, which seemed a positive sign. There were even some dark tulips on the windowsill, dead now, their stems arched almost double so that they looked like curtseying ballerinas, but all the same, evidence that Erica felt she had something to live for, had hope for the future. She put the kettle on, placed cups and saucers on a tray and carried it into the sitting room.

Erica had her spectacles on and was reading a letter. After a few seconds she passed it to Rosamund. It was from Anthony, the address somewhere in Provence.

‘Oh dearest, I can't sleep, can't eat, can't exist without you. My life with M is a travesty of marriage, I have nothing to give her. I know she understands this, because she is far from stupid, yet chooses not to, refuses to question me, refuses to recognise my anguish at being away from you. She has taken this house for a month. How long can I stay here? Oh waste of moon, waste of night, darkness and stars. Dearest, you have all my love.'

Rosamund sat perfectly still, hardly breathing, reliving the tragedy of those three people. After a while she realised that tears were running down her cheeks, so she blew her nose, poured out the tea, cut the cherry cake, passed the plate to Erica and took a few sips of her scalding tea.

‘I don't know what that was all about,' she said. ‘It just shows how worked up I am, I suppose. Oh, why do things go so wrong for us all?'

Erica said nothing, only sat patiently waiting for her to continue.

So Rosamund sniffed again and told her about Daniel who'd been the great love of her student days, how she'd met him again and how she was now trying to help him. ‘Not for his sake, of course, but for mine. In the hope that he'll be able to fill the emptiness in my life.'

‘When I married Roger,' Erica said, ‘that was after the abortion when I felt so abandoned, I found I'd filled one emptiness and created another. Being married to the wrong person isn't the answer. Most of the people I used to know seemed to be unhappily married, but they thought, as I did, that it was better than being alone. I now think being alone is the second-best option.'

Rosamund thought about that as she munched her piece of cake. ‘I suppose it might be, but I think I've been alone too long. It's something I've tried and found wanting.'

‘Anyway,' Erica said, ‘you're embarked on a very exciting project. You might be giving Daniel a new start in life. And even if it is, as you say, mostly for your sake, he'll certainly reap the benefit. And if he's got great talent, as you seem to think, he might be even greater after this ordeal he's going through.'

‘Or perhaps he'll always feel hungry and deprived for what's missing from his life.'

‘I had to give up smoking three years ago because of my chest and I found it hell. And giving up heroin is of course far, far worse. I don't suppose he believes in prayer, does he?'

‘Why, do you?'

‘No. But I still prayed. A priest at the hospital – yes, I had bronchitis very badly and had to go to St Thomas's – had given me a special prayer written down on a card, and I used to recite it quite often. The words were very beautiful, I thought. Something about sinners and the grace of God.' She sighed. ‘The repetition seems to calm you down,' she said.

‘Do you ever go to church?'

‘Yes. I like to go on a fine summer morning. Especially when I haven't been anywhere else all week. Well, for one thing it's the only chance I get to wear a hat and I have several pretty hats. And there's coffee and biscuits afterwards in the vestry and always someone fairly interesting to talk to. You meet quite a nice type of person in St Mark's.'

Old people seemed to be so lonely, Rosamund thought. And yet she'd prefer to battle on alone like Erica than be cooped up in an old people's home. Cooped up; old people crowded together like chickens.

‘I wonder if you'd like a young companion to live with you? To do your shopping and so on?'

‘Oh, I don't think so, Rosamund, thank you. I have my home-help twice a week and I like to go to bed early. Why? Did you have anyone in mind?'

‘No, not really. But there's a young girl called Marie Brenner who lives in the same house as Daniel, and I suddenly wondered if you might have her here. But on second thoughts I don't think either of you would be too happy with the arrangement. She's got a baby so there'd be a fair bit of noise, and anyway her boyfriend may come back to her. I suddenly thought of her because she wanted to come with me to visit you today.'

‘She could come to visit me, by all means. I could give her a cup of tea or even a little lunch. Does she like baked beans on toast? That's what I usually have for lunch. Sometimes an egg.'

‘Her baby's called Theodore. He's almost a month old and rather small and he cries a lot. Her life has been quite hard, I think, though her mother helps her as much as she can. I'll probably never see her again after this week, but I know I won't be able to stop thinking about her. Anyway, I'll tell her she can visit you. She may turn up. I think you'd like her. You're the same type. Both of you brave and gutsy.'

But Erica had switched her attention to happier times. Her eyes, still turned towards Rosamund, no longer saw her. ‘I remember a country wedding Anthony took me to,' she said, her voice remote and dreamy. ‘I don't know how he'd been able to take me instead of Molly. It was the marriage of a young poet who perhaps didn't know him personally but only as an older poet who'd helped and encouraged him. Anyway, it was by far the nicest wedding I've ever been to. It was late June and we walked to the village church along a narrow path fringed with ferns and tall grasses. And the reception was in the garden of the bride's cottage, quite daring because it could have rained – but didn't. And we sat at long tables borrowed from the village hall with white cloths and bowls of wild flowers; dog roses and honeysuckle and red campion. And we had delicious home-baked bread and cold ham and cheeses and patés and crisp lettuce and watercress and big Victorian jugs of beer and cider with gooseberry crumble and thick yellow cream to follow. And then someone played the violin and the children danced and no one made speeches and I think everyone there was happy.'

‘How lovely,' Rosamund said, waiting for the dénouement. Had the rains come? Had someone embarrassed Anthony by referring to Erica as his wife? Had they quarrelled? Missed the train back to London? What?

But there was nothing more. Erica's head had slipped back against the wing of her armchair and she was asleep.

And Rosamund suddenly understood that for Erica, that day had become theirs; a celebration of their union, hers and Anthony's; that cloudless June day when they'd been in perfect harmony, holding hands, looking at each other knowing that they were as happy as two people could ever be. And the children had danced and someone had played the violin. Life in a day, Rosamund thought. And realised it was a phrase from one of Anthony's poems.

She took the tray back to the kitchen, washed the cups and saucers, put the remains of the cake away, picked up her bag and let herself out.

*   *   *

When she got back to Eversley Place, she found Daniel worse than she'd ever seen him; he couldn't seem to stop shaking, couldn't stop groaning. She did her best to comfort him. ‘Listen, you're halfway through now. You're winning. You're doing very well.' But her words sounded glib and foolish, even to herself.

She tried again. ‘Is it pain or nausea?' she asked him in a very gentle voice. She felt another surge of love for him.

He didn't answer, just sat slumped in his chair, breathing heavily, his head almost touching his chest.

‘Both,' he said after a minute or two. ‘Both, and much more as well. Oh God, it's like your blood curdling in your veins and you're breathing poison gas. Like being wounded in the trenches and the stretcher-bearers passing you by.' He tried to smile, as though admitting to being melodramatic.

‘But the Methadone helps?' she asked, desperate for some reassurance.

‘You couldn't go through it without that,' he said. ‘Not unless they put you in a strait-jacket and left you to scream.'

‘And what about the clinic, if you get that far? You'll still get Methadone there?'

‘Yes. Only they give you smaller and smaller doses and gradually try to get you off it. Oh, God knows how they try to do it. Don't let's think of it. Anyway, it won't work in my case.'

‘It won't work if you're determined it won't. You must try to be more positive, Daniel.'

‘Christ, you sound exactly like a bloody social worker. No wonder Marie is frightened of you.'

‘Is she? Is she really?'

‘No, of course she isn't. Don't fucking listen to me when I'm like this. Don't take everything so fucking seriously, for God's sake.'

He started moaning again, rocking back and forth in his chair. She tried holding his hands, then wiping his forehead and chest with a cold wet cloth, but he couldn't bear her to touch him, and after about half an hour, begged her to leave.

‘I love you,' she said as she left him. But he couldn't or wouldn't respond.

*   *   *

She tapped on Marie's door and found her sitting on her bed painting her nails.

‘I got this stuff in Merstow Street market this afternoon,' she said. ‘Only thirty-five pence. It's called Dark Passion. Do you like it?' She held out her small hand in a graceful curve.

Rosamund inspected the bitten fingernails, now dark and shiny as blackberry jam. ‘Lovely. The smell's lovely too.' It was a pungent, healthy smell.

Theodore was asleep, his breathing hardly moving the little sheet that covered him.

‘I'm leaving now,' Rosamund said, rather sadly.

‘Yeh, I'm keeping out of his way, too. No one can help him when he's like this.'

Chapter Eighteen

After phoning and visiting several centres and getting references from the therapists running the counselling sessions he'd attended, Rosamund managed to get Daniel into a private rehabilitation centre in Richmond.

He was nervous and withdrawn when they arrived, objecting to the rules, though they were few, the too-genteel decor; pale grey and white, and the hushed, hospital atmosphere. She stayed with him as long as she could, hoping his mood would lighten, but finally had to tear herself away to catch the last train home, and though he kissed her as she left, he refused to smile. She was very distressed on the journey home, wondering what the outcome would be. That day he'd been even more pessimistic than usual about his chances of recovery.

‘I'm not too sure about him coming to live with us,' Joss had told her on the phone. ‘I may like him, but then again I may not.'

‘I think you will. Anyway, he's only coming as a lodger. Only for a few weeks, probably. If you like, you can come with me to visit him at the clinic, but you must remember that he's been seriously ill so that he's rather quiet and reserved at the moment.'

‘There's a Daniel in my school who's a pain in the bum.'

*   *   *

The next day was Joss's birthday, and as she'd been in London for over a week, Rosamund knew she'd have to make a great effort to be in party mood; Daniel and his problems had to be pushed to the very back of her mind.

She'd bought Joss a four-man ridge tent – PVC windows, corded steel uprights and ridge poles, guylines, pegs and carry case – and intended to set it up in the garden that afternoon before he came home from school. When she heard the car drawing up outside, she thought it would be her mother and Brian coming to help and supervise, and she rushed to the door.