Vacant Possession (16 page)

I think I’m going mad, Colin thought. And not a bad idea at that. Have the summer in a padded cell somewhere, and come home when it’s all over.

Francis—the Reverend Teller—came round just after midday. Claire was in the kitchen, making one of her cups of tea for Brownie Tea-Making Fortnight. Colin and Sylvia were preserving, between them, a strained silence. Colin noticed how his wife’s face brightened at the sight of Francis passing the kitchen window. She looked alert and keen, like someone ready to tackle a major social issue.

“Cup of tea?” Claire said.

“Why thank you, Claire, that’s kind. I’d rather have coffee, if it’s no trouble.”

“I don’t do coffee. Only tea.”

Sylvia got up. “Hello, Francis. I’ll get it. Claire, come from under my feet.”

“Don’t put yourself out,” said Francis in his relaxed way, which somehow implied that he was used to people putting themselves out but would waive his rights on this occasion. He was a solid man of forty-five, with blunt features and short cropped hair; despite his pacifist outlook, he was given to khaki clothing of military provenance, to ribbed sweaters with elbow patches, to epaulettes and complex trousers with pleated pockets buttoned on the thigh. When he laughed he showed pointed teeth which were unmistakably carnivorous. His whole person, Colin thought, exuded contradictions which were just too deep for hypocrisy and just too common for clinical schizophrenia.

“Hermione’s got us on the old camomile tea,” he said. “Gets it at the health-food shop. Must say I get a bit tired of it. Cup of Nescafé, strong, black, that’s the way I like it. Got any sweeteners?”

“How about sugar?”

“Oh, of course we have,” Sylvia said. “Colin, do you have to embarrass me?”

The phone rang in the living room. Karen answered it.

“Mum, it’s for you, it’s Meals on Wheels.”

“All right, I’m coming.”

“Try this,” Claire demanded, blocking her path and proffering a teacup. “Excellent, very good, or good?”

“I’m going to the phone, Claire. Give it to your father.” Sidestepping her daughter, she gave Francis a sidelong glance as she left the room.

“Francis, you’re an intelligent man,” said Colin.

“Yes?” said Francis guardedly.

“I have to ask you something. No, not now, Claire, put it down. Do you believe in coincidence?”

“Coincidence?” The vicar took his pipe out and sucked it. “Funny you should ask me that.”

Colin understood that the vicar had made a joke. A forced tremulous smile was his response. “No, but really?”

“I say, this is jolly good,” said the vicar, tasting Claire’s tea. “Of course I believe in it. Otherwise, when you were out on the street, you’d never see the same chap twice, would you?”

“Yes, well, that’s coincidence at its most basic level—”

“Oh, very basic,” the vicar agreed. “I say, what do I do now, fill in this mark sheet?”

“But I think I mean coincidence as a force, as an organising principle if you like, as an alternative set of laws to the ones we usually go by.”

“Oh, Jung,” said the vicar. “Where’s a pencil? I see, so I put this little tick in here…Synchronicity, eh? The old acausal connecting principle. Arthur Koestler, old J. W. Dunne.
An Experiment with Time
.”

“Yes, I know all that. But what do you think of it?”

“Murky waters,” said the vicar. He took his pipe out of his mouth and indicated with it; Hermione did not allow him tobacco. “Look here, let’s pinpoint this, Colin. What exactly is it that you’re asking me?”

“I don’t know. Please, Claire, no more tea. My life seems to be falling apart, or rather—well, reorganising itself on some new principle entirely.”

“For instance?”

“Oh, you know how it is. You have hopes, they’re disappointed. You put the past behind you, find a modus vivendi. Suddenly it’s under threat. The past seems to be the present. I look at the faces about me, some familiar, some not so familiar, and I imagine I can see echoes—shadows, I suppose you’d say—of other faces. The air seems to be full of allusions. I look at people and I imagine them to be thinking all sorts of things. I don’t know whether it’s reasonable or not.”

“I wish you could give me a more concrete example.”

“Cup number 27,” said Claire. “The milk’s smelling a bit funny again, never mind.”

“Well, all this about my mother…it’s as if she’s come back from the dead. It’s so unnatural to see somebody sit up like that and speak for the first time in years…it’s deeply sinister, it’s predictive, that’s what I feel.”

“Predictive of what?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did know, if I knew I could prepare us for it. Our lives have been quite calm, all considered, for the past ten years, as calm as they can ever be when there’s a young family growing up…. But now there’s something hanging over us.”

The vicar smiled; comfortable little pads, like hassocks, appeared beneath his chilly eyes. “Oh, come now, Colin. A touch melodramatic, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Things happen…they seem to have meaning, but they don’t. A while ago I was mowing the front lawn. It was a lovely day. I was enjoying myself. Suddenly there was a set of teeth staring up at me.”

“Teeth,” the vicar said. “Human teeth, Colin?”

“Yes, human teeth. Claire, I can’t drink this. The milk’s off.”

Claire burst into tears. “You’re supposed to put down for the tea, not the milk. How can I get to fifty cups if nobody will drink it?”

The vicar said, “I’m afraid it sounds like a classic case of…something unpleasant.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Colin said.

“So have you thought of, you know, seeing someone? A chap?”

Suzanne phoned up Jim’s house. Her heart fluttered wildly when she heard the ringing tone. There was a dull pain in the pit of her stomach, her throat was closed and aching. She wrapped her hand so tightly round the receiver that the nails turned white. All day she had been steeling herself to make the call. Again and again she had pictured it, rehearsed it in her mind. To make it easier for herself she had invented some superstitions and pegged them around her fear. I shall let it ring twenty times, and if after twenty times she does not answer I will be reprieved, and I can put the phone down with a clearer mind because it will be a signal that ringing her was not the right thing to do.

Between ring twelve and ring thirteen, the baby has grown a little, added a few cells to the person it will be. She sees herself relaxing her grip, replacing the receiver, walking away and out of the room to climb the stairs and lie on her bed. She closes her eyes. At the nineteenth ring, the phone is answered.

“Hello?”

Her voice sticks in her throat; comes out as a shrill little gasp. “Is that Isabel Ryan?”

“Yes, who’s that?”

“Don’t you know who I am?”

“I’m afraid not. Who are you?”

“It’s Suzanne Sidney.”

There was a long pause. She had expected it. She waited. There was no answer, but she had not heard the receiver replaced. Perhaps she had laid it quietly on a table and gone away. She could not imagine Jim’s house. He had never described it. She did not know where the phone was, in the living room or in the hall; or perhaps Mrs. Ryan was lying on her bed, talking over an extension, and the receiver now suffocated in Jim’s pillow. But somehow she sensed that Mrs. Ryan was still there; breathing, breathing quietly, gathering her wits. When the silence had gone on for a long time she said, “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.” The woman’s voice sounded very far away. “Yes, I remember, I know who you are.”

Suzanne waited. Then she said, “I think we ought to meet.”

“You want us to meet? Why?”

“I should have thought it was obvious. We have things to talk about.”

“I can’t imagine what things. Suzanne, how old are you now?”

“I’m eighteen. Don’t you know?”

“I couldn’t remember. I’m not sure that I ever knew your age exactly.”

“What
do
you know about me?”

“Not much.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Suzanne, is something wrong?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I see, and are you…distressed about that?”

Mrs. Ryan’s voice had a strangely detached, professional note; as if the whole thing had nothing to do with her. What a cold woman she must be, Suzanne thought. Everything Jim has said is true.

“No, I’m not distressed.” She licked her dry lips, tasting their salt. “I’m rather proud, actually. I just need to talk the situation out with you.”

“Well…that’s all right, I suppose.” She sounded puzzled. “Have you talked to other people about this? Your father?”

“Oh, he thinks I should have an abortion. Nobody seems to understand.”

“You certainly should have proper counselling before you make your decision.”

“I want to meet you. Alone, or all three of us, it doesn’t matter. I think we ought to talk this out.”

“Suzanne—no, calm down now—I can’t think what to say, this has come upon me out of the blue. You see, how can I advise you? I don’t know you at all. I suppose he’s told you that I was a social worker…but really I can’t imagine what he’s told you.”

“He’s told me a lot. Everything that matters.”

“But there’s nothing left between us. It’s been over for years.”

“That’s exactly what he said.”

“Oh, so you think that an uninvolved person could help to sort out your problem?”

“You’re hardly uninvolved.”

“Look, have you tried the British Pregnancy Advisory Service? Their number must be in the book—”

“How can you be so callous? That would be very convenient for you, wouldn’t it, if I got rid of it? You don’t know how it feels, because you’ve never had any children.”

There was a silence. She sensed that Isabel was deeply shocked by her remark. Perhaps she had gone too far; though it was no more than the truth. After a long time, the woman spoke.

“Suzanne, listen carefully. Much as I regret the situation in which you find yourself, I don’t see how I can help you. What you do doesn’t matter to me, one way or the other. And even what your father thinks, that can’t matter now. I have troubles of my own.” She hesitated; a long hesitation. “Perhaps in some way I’m missing the point?”

“I think you’re missing it by a mile.” Fright made Suzanne aggressive. “You do know who I am, don’t you? You do know about our relationship?”

“We’re not related,” Isabel said. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Oh, very clever,” Suzanne said. Her voice was shrill with exasperation. “He did tell me about you, how crazy you were, how you didn’t give a damn for anybody but yourself.”

“He said that?”

“And more. He said he sometimes wished he’d never set eyes on you.”

Another pause. “Yes, I see. Well, I don’t really need to know this. Not at this juncture. Goodbye.”

Click. She had rung off. The bitch, Suzanne thought; the monster. Jim had not told her then. He had not told her there was going to be a baby. Unless she did know, and was trying to ride it out. There was something very strange about the woman’s attitude altogether. Perhaps she was just one of those people who never face up to anything until they have to. Immediately she picked up the phone again and rang Jim at the bank. She asked to be put through to the assistant manager. He answered at once.

“Suzanne? I thought we agreed you weren’t to call me at work?”

“Yes. We did.”

“I told you: let me call you.”

“But you never do, Jim.”

“No. Well…”

“I rang up your house just now.”

“That was silly.”

“Why silly?”

“I gave you that number for…emergencies.”

“Emergencies.” Suzanne digested the word. “I spoke to Isabel,” she said.

Jim swore softly. There was silence for a moment. The line crackled.

“Your wife…I’m not sure if she’s very stupid or very clever. She didn’t seem to know about the baby.”

“She does now, I take it.”

“Of course.”

“Suzanne, get off the line. The switchboard will be listening in.”

“All you care about are appearances.”

“Appearances are all I’ve got,” Jim said. “I’m ringing off now. I’ll be in touch.”

Suzanne put down the phone. She trailed upstairs.

Isabel lay on the bed, her head turned sideways on the pillow, watching the telephone as if it were alive. She felt sick; she didn’t know if it were the phone call, or what she had drunk that morning. It’s not often you get a call like that.

So that’s what Colin thinks of me. Why did he talk about me at all then? What combination of circumstances made him confide in that hysterical teenager? And how did she get my number?

Her mind moved slowly, very slowly, in smaller and smaller circles. One day I ought to call Colin, and ask him how the past is catching up. Compared to her, he had nothing on his conscience. Errors personal, errors professional…memory with violence. Like a series of snapshots, or outline drawings, flip them through at speed and watch them move…Daddy slinking home from the park, Muriel Axon with her idiot head lolling above her strange blue smock. She suspected, and didn’t let herself suspect; she had made connections, and tried to break them. She had punished herself; but of course that would never be enough.

She wasn’t joking when she said she had troubles of her own. She smoothed her hand down over her body. It was all most unusual. There was nothing inside her but her liver, getting harder and harder. It was a horrible death, people said; but then it was a horrible life, wasn’t it? She ought to be able to feel it, a tender mass expanding just below the margin of her ribs. Everybody knows what happens to people who harbour guilt; they get malignant diseases, and die. Not just little Suzanne who was pregnant. She had carried the weight around for ten years. Now it was becoming visible, that was the difference.

On Friday Suzanne went down to the Housing Aid Centre. She took some magazines to wile away her time, and a box of tissues, because she knew that she would keep crying every few minutes. She could no longer do anything about this; it was as if a tap had been turned on inside her head.

Yesterday she had told her mother that she saw no point in going back to university in the autumn. That had precipitated another row. She expected her father to see the sense of what she was saying because at least he knew something about education, and he could have confirmed how difficult it would be for her to go on studying. But her father seemed afraid of her mother nowadays. He didn’t want to offend her. Mum had said that she needn’t think she was going to mope about the house getting more and more pregnant, waiting for this man who was probably never coming. Claire had made her a cup of tea, and she had knocked it over in temper and fright. The atmosphere in the house was poisonous. As she ran upstairs again she had seen Lizzie Blank watching her; the look of speculation on the woman’s face had been quickly replaced by an expression of sympathy and concern, and immediately she bent down, scrabbling under the hallstand with her dustpan and brush. The vacuum cleaner had packed up, the tumble dryer had broken, and the iron was overheating; perhaps there was something wrong with the wiring? Wiring? her father said: I haven’t had the estimates for redecorating the kitchen yet, do you think I’m made of money? She began to cry again, at the look Lizzie Blank gave her, at this evidence of compassion from a total stranger.