A Passionate Man (32 page)

He glanced at her. Her face was turned away from him, towards the blank black banks of the Winchester bypass.

‘How is Liza?' Marina had said on the telephone.

‘Shattered.'

‘Of course.'

Archie had been about to say that there was something withdrawn in her, too, something unexpected and private, but Marina forestalled him.

‘I shall come down and see her, of course.'

His heart had leapt.

‘You will?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then I shall see you.'

‘Archie—'

‘Can you imagine how I am to go on, how—'

‘Stop that!' Marina commanded, from London.

‘Don't you feel it? Doesn't it mean anything to you?'

She had put the receiver down, cut him off. She had left him as she had left him several times before, desperate for more, for revelations and displays of dependence she would not give.

‘Are you in bed with me,' he had demanded, ‘because you are missing my father?'

She had looked at him without expression.

‘That is none of your business,' she said.

She had said that to him, too, when he had asked what she would say to Liza. He longed for her to come down to Stoke Stratton, longed for it fiercely, and dreaded it, too. What a bond women had. What power. And yet, looking quickly again at Liza, he knew he had power now, too, power over her as he had had when they first met and he had borne her away to Scotland. The difference now was that he was not sure he wanted it any more and he was very sure he did not know how to use it.

He swung the car up Beeches Lane, flicking up the headlamp beams. They caught, at once, the huge gleaming developer's board by the field gate. It was painted cream, with a wreath of daisies and poppies and ears of corn around the border, and, in the left-hand corner, a fatuous tabby cat lifted a paw towards the lettering. ‘Home At Last', it ran. ‘Beeches Lawn, a luxury four-bedroomed house of distinction'. And underneath, in smaller letters, ‘Beeches Close. Starter homes of character'. Beyond the board, in the field, an immense pile of bricks loomed like a factory, and straw from their packing blew about in the dark air and scratched against the windscreen.

‘Richard's putting those on the open market,' Liza said.

‘What?'

‘I heard in the post office. He's offered them at twenty-five thousand with mortgage help to anyone under thirty-five born in the Strattons. There's only been one taker. The rest are muttering about the money.'

‘Prefer to sulk in rented cottages—'

‘Yes,' Liza said.

Archie said awkwardly, ‘I'm sorry about that, all that—'

She wanted to laugh.

‘That!'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Oh, Archie. As if any of that mattered now!'

From the back seat, Thomas rose, instinctively wakened by the approach of home. He was unable to prevent feeling pleased.

‘I'm hungry,' Thomas said.

Clare was not impulsive. Or rather, she was afflicted by impulsive feelings which she was afraid to implement in case she could not carry off the consequences. But, emboldened by her dinner at Chewton Glen – her solicitor, though hardly prepossessing to look at, had turned out to be a good companion and more than easy with the wine list – and a further invitation to a point-to-point at Hackwood Park, Clare thought she would simply drive out to Stoke Stratton, without telephoning first.

Liza had not telephoned since she had sobbed all over Clare's kitchen. That episode had left Clare feeling quite indulgent and, at the same time, less dissatisfied with her own life, a state of affairs rather assisted by the solicitor. Being early March, the evenings were growing lighter, and, if she left her office dead on five, she could be in Stoke Stratton before half-past, while the children were still up and could prevent her visit looking, in any way, too tremendously enquiring. She was fond of the children in a bleak, half-hearted way, but she believed them to be spoiled, particularly Imogen, and was too apt to see them as part of the list of assets that Liza possessed and she did not.

She arrived, as she had estimated, at twenty-five past five. Archie's car was gone, but Liza's was parked in the drive with the tailgate up and a box of groceries inside, waiting to be carried into the house. Clare made a quick mental check of what the box contained – packs of white lavatory paper (Archie, Clare knew, had taught Liza to despise pink or blue, or, worst of all, peach), tins of dog food, cereals, an immense bottle of liquid detergent of a size no single person ever aspired to, rafts of fruit yoghurts, loaves, nets of oranges – before picking it up and carrying it round to the kitchen door.

‘Yoohoo,' Clare said, pushing the door open with her knee. ‘Delivery man!'

Liza was standing at the kitchen table, laying sausages for the children's supper on a baking sheet. She had not taken off her jacket since coming in from school, and looked tired and drawn.

‘Oh!' she said. ‘Clare. Oh, how nice of you—'

‘I met it sitting there, on my way in.'

She put the box down on the table and kissed her sister.

‘I went to Sainsbury's,' Liza said. ‘I forgot that box.'

The door from the hall was pushed open and Thomas, in a Batman sweatshirt, came in with half a model aeroplane.

‘Thomas!'

‘Hello,' Thomas said indifferently.

‘You're back early. It isn't the end of term, is it?'

‘He wasn't well,' Liza said, opening the oven door and banging the baking sheet inside. ‘Were you?'

Clare and Thomas kissed without fervour.

‘You look fine now.'

‘Mikey's hidden the glue—'

‘He's a lot better. Aren't you, darling?'

‘Will you make him find it?'

‘Thomas, not now. Clare's just come.'

‘Please, please—'

‘Five minutes,' Liza said. ‘Five mintues' peace.'

‘Mum—'

‘Thomas,' Liza said, raising her voice, ‘go away or I'll never help you find your glue.'

The door banged behind him sulkily.

‘What was the matter?' Clare said.

‘Tea?' Liza said, unbuttoning her jacket. ‘Coffee? Whisky?'

‘Tea would be lovely.'

‘I'm going to have whisky,' Liza said.

‘But you never drink whisky.'

‘I do now.'

Clare said, ‘Liza, what's going on?'

Liza said nothing. She took off her jacket and hung it behind the door and put tumblers on the table and a half-full whisky bottle.

‘I almost never drink this,' Clare said.

‘Nor me. But this is no moment for almost never anything.'

‘Liza—' Clare said pleadingly.

Liza looked mutinous. She poured whisky into the tumblers and then ran water into a green jug embossed with vine leaves (Clare remembered Archie bringing that jug home, from a junk shop somewhere) and put it on the table.

Then she put her hands to her face and said, ‘Archie's been to bed with Marina and Thomas tried to run away from school.'

Clare sat there. She stared at the whisky in the glasses.

Liza said, ‘I'm OK, though,' and burst into tears.

Clare went round the table and put her arms around her sister. Liza, who was always rounded and pleasantly resilient to touch, felt bony and awkward.

‘Marina,' Liza sobbed. ‘I can't bear that it's Marina.'

‘Is it over?'

‘I think so. But he doesn't want it to be.'

Clare took one arm away and used it to pour water into the whisky glasses.

‘Here,' she said to Liza.

‘I didn't mean to tell you,' Liza said, blowing her nose. ‘I don't want anyone to know, not anyone. Certainly nobody here; not the village.'

‘But they needn't.'

Liza took the tumbler and gulped.

‘Oh, Clare—'

‘Poor Liza. Poor little you.'

‘Oh no,' Liza said, looking at Clare. ‘Oh, not that. You know that's not true.'

‘Have you told him, told Archie about you and Blaise?'

‘Heavens, no—'

‘Don't you think you should?'

Liza sat down on a kitchen chair and said, spacing the words as if she were spitting them out, ‘I could not bear him to know.'

‘But he has told you—'

‘No. I found out. I put my arms round him and bust her glasses. They were in his pocket, after—'

‘So then he told you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Everything.'

‘Oh yes.'

Clare thought about Marina. She remembered saying to Liza, of Marina, ‘You and I will never be that sexy. We never have been.' They had been stunned by Marina; they'd got frightfully over-excited about her and pretended they were at school, high on a crush on a prefect. And Archie had been so rude that day, sulky and prickly with hardly veiled insults. Archie. Clare grew hot thinking about him. Faithful, strong-minded, protective Archie, in bed with his stepmother, his widowed stepmother. It was the stuff of Sophocles, not the stuff of a doctor in Stoke Stratton, a country doctor.

She said in a voice choked with bewilderment, ‘Will you part?'

‘I – I don't think so.' Liza took a swallow and pulled a faint face. ‘I don't know. I don't know if he can go back or come back or whatever it is.'

‘But the children—' Clare lowered her voice. ‘Is that what was the matter with Thomas?'

‘Partly. And partly Andrew dying and partly, would you believe it, being convinced that, if he saw Marina, everything would be all right.' Liza raised her tired face to Clare's. ‘To be honest, I don't really know what's the matter with Thomas. I only know parts of it. He's very angry with us. But he's slept better the last two nights. And he's eating. Archie—' She bit her lip. ‘Archie told him yesterday that relationships were two-way traffic systems and he wasn't too young to realize that. Rich, really, coming from him.'

‘But what have you had to complain of, up to now?'

Liza sighed.

‘How do you mend trust?'

‘Aren't you breaking it, too, keeping your secret?'

‘I'm ashamed,' Liza said.

Clare stood up.

‘That's something else altogether.'

‘What a mess,' Liza said, draining her glass. ‘What a mess.'

The door opened. Thomas had added a baseball cap adorned with a golden bat to his ensemble. He hissed at his mother.

‘Glue. Glue. Glue.'

‘Coming.'

A muffled roaring came through the open door.

‘That's Imogen,' Thomas said. ‘We zipped her into a sleeping bag. She wanted it, till she was zipped up and then she didn't.'

Liza moved towards the door.

‘At least with Imogen around we can't see ourselves as tragic—' She paused in the doorway. ‘One day,' she said, looking back at Clare, ‘one day we'll have a whole conversation which doesn't even mention us. I promise.'

Clare backed her car out of the drive and turned it away from Winchester. The solicitor had said he would telephone between six-thirty and seven, but she was confident enough to think it quite a good thing if she were not there, as well as being certain he would try later. She drove through Stoke Stratton, past the post office outside which Mrs Betts was talking to the postwoman, a stout, highly made-up woman in a bursting dark-blue uniform, who shared many of Mrs Betts's aims and prejudices. As Clare drove by, Mrs Betts peered in the fading light to see who it was. It was a severe temptation to wind down the window and call helpfully, ‘Dr Logan's sister-in-law!'

‘Dr Logan's sister-in-law,' Mrs Betts informed the postwoman.

The health centre car-park was full, it being the middle of surgery. Clare parked on the edge and went into the cheerful, heartless waiting room where people sat with the despondency induced by waiting.

‘I wonder if I could see Dr Logan? I'm not a patient, I'm his sister-in-law.'

Her voice carried clearly round the room. The receptionist said that, if she would care to wait, Dr Logan might be free after all his patients.

‘Could you tell him? Could you tell him I'm here?'

The receptionist looked as if this was a well-nigh intolerable request.

‘After the next patient.'

‘I may see him?'

The receptionist looked affronted.

‘Oh no. Certainly not. After the next patient, I will tell him you are here.'

Clare drifted over to a chair beneath a threatening plant with fibrous stems and hideous shining dark leaves, fingered like crude hands. Magazines on yachts and country life and children's board books entitled
Miffy Goes Skating
and
Watch Me Jump!
lay in a ragged heap on the table in front of her. Beside her, a neat old man dabbed forlornly at a streaming eye and opposite, an obese young mother, her tyres of flesh pushing against fancy pink knitting, placidly fed a vast baby out of a bag of onion-flavoured crisps. Their smell hung in the air, fried and synthetic.

It was a long wait. Clare read
Watch Me Jump!
which seemed to encourage the kind of exhibitionism Imogen favoured, and then a long, earnest article on the few remaining untouched Saxon meadows of England. The old man disappeared obediently towards Dr Campbell's disembodied voice over the intercom, and then Archie, unseen, asked tiredly for Tracy Durfield. The great pink-knitted girl crushed the crisp bag into the carpet tiles with her foot and, heaving the baby into her arms, shambled towards the door to the surgeries. Clare picked up
Miffy Goes Skating
. Miffy turned out idiotically to be a rabbit.