A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (12 page)

‘How did you find me, Dad?’ She had purposely kept her new address from him with the idea of avoiding this very catastrophe.

‘I had to ring up your mother.’ He sounded indignant.
‘She
knew, all right. You’d told
her
. I don’t understand, Sally, it’s not like you to be so secretive.’

Yes, it is, Sarah thought, very like me. But you wouldn’t know. I’ve been keeping secrets from you all my life and you never noticed. She said, ‘Can’t you call me Sarah like everyone else?’

He looked at her in amazement as if the question had not arisen a few dozen times before. ‘Why should I? Your name’s Sally. Your mother and I, we’ve always called you Sally.’

‘My name is Sarah,’ said Sarah, persevering. ‘You christened me Sarah, don’t you remember?’

‘But we called you Sally. We always called you Sally.’

‘Oh, skip it.’ He had infinite patience and time; he would argue all night if she let him. ‘Look, Dad, I’m sorry but I have to go out and I want to have a bath and change first.’ All the time they were speaking she wondered what Connie and, worse still, Annabel, had made of him: dirty bare feet in sandals, a matted beard, flowing black garments. The sort of thing she found mildly amusing in the street on someone of twenty. Oh God, it just couldn’t be worse, in a new place, so soon after moving in. She would never live it down. It would give Annabel a permanent hold over her. ‘I wish you’d phone instead of dropping in, Dad, then we could fix something. It’s impossible like this.’

He eyed her sorrowfully: she thought he was probably high on something, either drugs or drink; she could not be sure which since she could always smell both on his clothes. ‘You’re hard, girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve got no heart. I didn’t even have your number. But your mother did. And your address.’ His speech rhythms were out, in some odd way: he
seemed to be functioning at a different pace from the rest of the world.

‘No, she didn’t,’ Sarah said truthfully. ‘I gave them to Barbara. She must have passed them on.’ And when I see her, she thought, I’ll kill her. Typical Barbara: with John and the kids to fall back on she lands me right in it. Selfish bitch. All their childhood animosity flooded back.

‘And why not?’ he said indignantly. ‘She’s got some feeling in her, some natural feeling.’

‘Then why not visit her instead of me, if I’m so hardhearted.’ But she knew why. Barbara would claim she was broke and he would not dare approach John. Beyond patting the heads of the grandchildren there was not much to be gained there, maybe just egg and chips on a very good day.

‘Can I help it if I want to see both of you? It wouldn’t be natural if I didn’t. My two little girls.’

He was getting maudlin. Sarah sat and waited for it to pass. It would not last long, she knew from experience, and never prevented him from appraising his surroundings. In a moment, predictably, he said, ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Sally.’

It was at times like these that Sarah wished she smoked. She was sure it would be a comfort: it seemed to help other people. And at least it would have been something to do. She could not even have a drink without offering him one. She opened her handbag and began to repair her face. As if reading her mind, he started to eye the bottles on the trolley. ‘How about a little drop of something?’

‘Those are Annabel’s.’

‘But she’s a friend of yours, she wouldn’t mind. Surely one of your friends wouldn’t grudge your father a drink.’

Sarah, snapping her compact shut, said, ‘She’s not one of my friends and she’d grudge anyone a drink. It’s her flat and we’re all sharing. Not friends. We pay rent to her and she
pays the landlord. It’s a nice place because it’s expensive. So you see, we all have our problems, okay?’

‘Sally.’ He was looking at her with his shocked expression. How watery his eyes were becoming, now that she noticed, as if the blue, always pale, was leaking into the white, and the white itself was criss-crossed with red. God help me, she thought, I despise you, I’ll never forgive you for being such a slob, and if I could afford it, I’d pay you to go away for ever.

‘You’re surely not thinking I’m after your money,’ he said in outraged tones, as though she had blasphemed in church.

‘Oh no,’ Sarah said, letting full irony into her voice. ‘Nothing like that. But since I can’t have a meal with you, as I’m going out, maybe a pound would help?’ And she took one out of her bag, after rapidly calculating what she had left to live on for the rest of the week.

He took it instantly: almost snatched it, in fact. Then, with it safely in his hand: ‘Is that all you can spare?’

Sarah stood up. The crisis—for the time being—was over. ‘Yes, Dad, I’m broke.’

He surveyed her clothes. ‘You don’t look broke.’

‘No, I try not to.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘You’re very hard. I’ve always done my best for you and you turn out like this. I don’t know.’

Sarah said, ‘No, there’s no justice, is there?’ She thought if she heard once more about all he had allegedly done for her, she would do him a physical injury. A terrible nausea was rising in her throat, the recurrent sense of shame at their being related. Flesh and bone. He had made her. He and her mother, now mink-clad and chauffeur driven and Riviera-brown. They had rolled around together one night and she had been the result. It was enough to put you off sex for life.

‘But you’ve got a new job,’ he went on, ‘an important new job. You’re getting more money. Barbara said so.’

Barbara, Sarah reflected, should fry in oil, slowly. ‘That’s
right,’ she said, ‘and I pay tax on it. The remainder is there in your hand.’

His fingers clenched instinctively on the pound, as if she might try to take it away from him. ‘Do you want me to go on my knees?’

‘No, you’re heartily welcome. If I had any more you could have it but I haven’t, so there you are.’

His face crinkled up. Only the words got through to him, the tone meant nothing. ‘You’re a good girl, Sally.’

‘Yes, good and hard.’

‘Ah, I didn’t mean that. You mustn’t take too much notice of all I say. I don’t always mean it.’

Then for God’s sake why say it? Sarah thought. Her back was stiff, she realised, and quite suddenly. That could only be tension. She must have been sitting so rigidly that she had made herself ache.

She walked with him to the door, feeling all the time the pointed non-presence of Connie and Annabel. They had not gone out. They were there somewhere, in their rooms, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. They were tactfully leaving her alone with her embarrassment.

‘It’s a fine big flat,’ he said approvingly.

‘Yes, for four people it’s just right.’

He put on his hurt face, the one that long ago used to upset her. ‘All right, child, all right. I’m not trying to move in.’

Not much, she thought, not much. But she couldn’t say it. ‘Have a nice dinner,’ she said. ‘Ring me up sometime.’

He hesitated on the doorstep. ‘And where will you be going?’

Sarah said, ‘Out.’

‘I know that, I know that. Out somewhere grand with a boy-friend, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know where. I won’t be going anywhere if I don’t have a bath.’ She wondered when last he had had one, come to that. Now that she was close to him she could smell it, dirt
and sweat, arising from socks and underwear mainly, she thought, and the terrible staleness of unclean old clothes.

‘Boy-friends,’ he said. ‘You want to be careful with boyfriends. Remember, I’ve always brought you up to be respectable.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sarah. ‘Quite.’

He actually shook his fist at her, the one still containing her pound. ‘Now then, my girl, none of that. After all I am your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you remember that.’

‘You don’t allow me to forget it.’

His eyes narrowed, but he seemed to be looking past her. ‘You’re getting altogether too saucy for my liking.’

Sarah ached to close the door. Her whole body leaned against it, her fingers trembled lovingly on the catch. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. Perhaps if she sounded pathetic enough he would let her go. ‘I’ve had a long, hard day. Let me go and run my bath now, hm, and we’ll talk another time?’ She was wheedling him and it sickened her, but there was no other way.

He said reluctantly, ‘Well, all right,’ and then to her horror leaned forward. ‘Give us a kiss then.’ So this was the price. She would have given five pounds to avoid it, ten if she had it, anything. But to refuse now would be to delay his departure—the greater evil. She inclined her cheek and held her breath as the furry chin and warm wet lips brushed against her face. She nearly retched. It was involuntary, like the times when a doctor or dentist pushed something down her throat. But he seemed not to notice. He said contentedly, ‘Well, so long for now,’ and trotted off down the corridor. Sarah closed the door before he had gone a yard. She went straight to the bathroom, locked herself in, and began to scrub at her cheek with soap and a flannel. She scrubbed till it was red and sore. In the middle of the scrubbing she began to cry. Once she had started she seemed not able to stop. She
went on crying while she ran her bath full of green foaming water; she was still crying when she sat in it. She had filled it very full, wanting to immerse herself completely, and she thought how absurd it was to be wallowing in all this water and yet still producing more. She would have to go out. She could not stay in to be the object of sympathetic curiosity. No one must know there was anything wrong: that was rule number one. She must laugh it off or better still ignore the whole thing. Never show weakness. Never. There was not a person alive who would not take advantage of you if you did.

* * *

‘Simon, can I come over? If you’re not busy, that is.’

He was busy, she could tell. His sleepy voice meant he had been studying, curled up in a chair. But he sounded pleased and welcoming.

‘I’ll get a bus,’ she said, meaning a taxi. She was feeling reckless on her own account but she did not want to alarm him. At the off-licence on the corner she bought a bottle of wine as a gesture.

His room was in its usual mess and she did not mind. She pretended to be very gay but she did not want to talk so she got him talking and they played records and drank the wine. She got rather drunk rather quickly. He said he had already eaten so she pretended that she had, too. The time stretched out interminably, an agony of waiting. He never took her directly to bed, which normally did not matter, but tonight she needed the comfort of another human body, young, warm and clean, to heal her: needed it so much that her skin felt sore with waiting, as it did when she was getting flu. At last when they were in bed and making love she cried with relief and he thought he must have pleased her very much. He went to sleep like a puppy, curled up and happy, totally relaxed, and she lay awake protectively and wondered why she did not love him.

‘S
UPPOSE
I take the boys down to Salcombe,’ said Cassie, ‘and you join us at the weekend.’ The twins were becoming restless now that the adjustment from school to home was complete, and they were not due to go abroad to visit friends until September. August yawned before Cassie as an unfillable void. Normally they made plans for it, went away somewhere together. She had never known her husband so irresolute. It was only since Prue’s wedding, but a sort of blight seemed to have settled on him. He talked less, and when he did it was nearly always about Prue or the fact that he was middle-aged, which seemed to have only just occurred to him. She did not know how to make contact on any other subject, and she was becoming impatient at her own failure, and at him for causing it. He seemed indifferent to everything around him, and she felt that all her efforts at compensation had been disregarded. Inevitably, she attacked him through the children. ‘We might as well go; they’re not getting much attention from you.’

Manson looked up from a manuscript. She observed that he was bringing much more work home of late. ‘What?’

She repeated what she had said with weary patience. She hated to be involved in a scene like this, not seeing herself as a complaining wife.

He said with his new detachment, ‘That simply isn’t true.’

‘Well, my parents would like some time with them anyway and I don’t suppose you want to invite them here.’

He gave her a small, tolerant smile which she resented. ‘No.’

‘Anyway, it’ll be more fun for the boys by the sea. We owe them that much at least.’

He said, drawn, ‘Don’t make it sound as if we never do anything for them.’

She scented blood and perhaps, out of it, truth. ‘Well, we don’t do much. I think we rather take them for granted. We make far more fuss over Prue.’ She hesitated, as if testing the ground before placing her foot on it. ‘It’s a case of the prodigal daughter, if you like.’

‘Is it?’ He stared at her coldly.

She thought they were becoming daily more separate and she did not know how to stop it. It was as if all the warmth of family life that she had devoted herself to generating all these years was now quite abruptly flowing out of the house, seeping through the walls, vanishing. They had lost some vital insulation.

‘Well, she’s away now, isn’t she? So that’s that.’

‘Not really.’ Cassie braced herself for another attempt at being calm and reasonable. When she caught sight of herself in a mirror these days she thought she looked worn out and much, much older. There was a tension in the house where before everything had been fluid and easy. ‘She might as well be here. If you’re not talking about her, you’re thinking about her. The boys don’t get a look-in. Oh, I know you play the odd game with them but that’s not giving them your attention. God knows they’re away enough. This is our one big chance per year to catch up on them. Find out what they’re thinking; get to know them again.’

Manson, still holding his manuscript as a shield, said, ‘I’m tired and I have a lot on my mind.’

‘You have Prue on your mind.’ It was out before she could check it. ‘I simply can’t understand a) why you’re so worried about her and b) what makes you think you can do anything.
She’s on holiday with her husband and that is that. We’ve got our own lives to lead here.’