A Period of Adjustment (11 page)

For a moment she let fall the careful guard she had erected. ‘You
knew?
How, for God's sake?'

‘Those little lunches you tripped off to when I was about,
not
when I was away in Rome or Boston, when I was just up in the attic working? I didn't think that those little lunches with “Muriel” or “Maureen” at Fortnum's or San Lorenzo were absolutely kosher. As far as I know they don't use the same after-shave as Eric. Do they?'

‘How the hell do you know
what
after-shave Eric uses? How the hell-?'

‘It was always the same stink. After your “girls' lunches”, and I was pretty certain they weren't all into Monsieur Givenchy. Right? Anyway, you don't have to tell me any more, we are only hurting each other needlessly. Let's stop.'

She pushed a bracelet up her arm, fiddled with a cuff. ‘I
don't know what this bathroom thing was.' Her voice had become quiet. ‘I only know I got really furious because Giles was so damned rude. Difficult. Eric didn't want any kind of problems when he was' – she cleared her throat – ‘in the house. He said he wouldn't be responsible for any, well, trouble with the children. And if anything happened, a fall, something – or a bad cut – you see, Giles always locked himself in there, for ages. Refused to come out sometimes. Sulking. Silent. You can't imagine how maddening he was. He was a real little sod. So if he ever decided to do something seriously idiotic, locked in there. Well …' She took another pull at her drink. ‘So Eric removed the lock. Simple. No problem.'

‘No problem. Except for the boy.'

She shrugged indifferent shoulders. She was beaten and knew it, but her very vulnerability infuriated her. ‘I detest sneaks. I brought up my children bloody well, and being a sodding little sneak was
never
on their agendas.'

‘Giles didn't sneak. He just dropped a few bits and pieces here and there, quite unaware really, didn't even know he was doing so. Fragments which I picked up. There was no kind of conspiracy, Helen. Promise you. But when I told him this morning that we were going to have this meeting, to discuss a divorce, about which he already knew he said, because Annie had told him, he just blew a fuse. That's all. And if at ten you keep a whole lot of intense anguish bottled up for long then, when the bottle busts, it bloody well does. Everywhere. The whole thing explodes. It did this morning.'

‘Anguish! Christ! He's a selfish, sullen, rude little boy. He needs a tough school, a boarding school. Eric should have given him a bloody good hiding, I always stopped him, but he really asked for it sometimes.'

‘Over his knee? Good old fashioned thrashing with a slipper? Trousers down? That it?'

My anger was so obvious that she shifted about uncomfortably. ‘I didn't say that. That's Victorian nonsense.'

‘If you had allowed that to happen, Helen, I'd have had Eric Whatever's
and
your guts for garters! I assure you.'

She got up, put her glass down and went over to the windows. Stood there, silhouetted against the brilliant light of the afternoon. ‘I love Eric. I want to be with him. I want to be Group Head of the company, and I won't let anything come in the way.' She had raised her voice and was speaking over her shoulder in order to beat the roar of traffic below. I got up and walked closer to her. ‘So just tell me what you want. I don't want the divorce contested. I'm guilty, I admit it. What do I have to do?'

‘I keep the boy, you keep Annie. I'll make financial arrangements for both of you, and that's that. We'll talk lawyers later.'

She leant against the window, tugging idly at the blowing curtain, not looking at me. ‘I'm his mother. I carried him, fed him.'

‘I'm his father. And I don't honestly feel that you have been the best mother he could have had, but let's not be forced to go into that. In a court. Let's be grown up and sensible. It's a fair division. You love Annie, don't much like Giles. I do. Okay?'

‘You don't know him. How tricky he is. You've only had him for a few weeks, for heaven's sake. You don't know what you're in for. It's totally idiotic. You can't look after a ten-year-old child. You can hardly look after yourself.'

‘I can try, and I'm about to. I am perfectly well aware that I haven't taken on a gerbil or a hamster. Now, here's what we do. I'll come back to London with Giles. I'll tell him what we have arranged and you tell Annie. You can see him whenever you want to, no question of that. We'll have a very sensible, easy relationship, all of us. And I can see Annie when I want. They can come and stay together here,
why not? There must be no kind of acrimony or stress when we are packing up Simla Road. You can tell your mother whatever you like about us. But just try to remember that once, not so long ago, we did love each other very much. It just happened to wear off. With use. Wear and tear. All right? We must put an end to the hurt and deception. For all our sakes.'

I put a hand on her shoulder, turned her towards me, tilted her chin up very gently. ‘Now. No more. We have wounded each other quite enough. We both know what we each want, separately, so with the last part of our lives left to us, let's make it work for each other. I only wish you well.'

She moved my hand away from her face. ‘You are asking a hell of a lot. Giving up my child. Christ!'

‘Worse than giving up Eric? Group Head or whatever you said? Worse than another chance at life? Come on, be sensible.'

‘Oh Lord, oh Lordy.' It was a sigh. ‘But does Giles agree to all this? Does he know what you have so cleverly arranged?'

‘He knows only one thing: he wants to stay with me. He is determined on that. He has been offered the choice. I won. Got it?'

She looked at herself in the full-length mirrors on the double-doors to the corridor. ‘God! I look a fright. Six for dinner.' She smoothed her skirt, turned left and right, hands on her hips, patted her stomach. ‘Is that all? Are you leaving now?'

I went to the desk, pulled out the little chair before it, handed her a pen. ‘Not quite yet. You write all this down for me. On Negresco letter paper. Just say what we have agreed today. Date it.'

She laughed mockingly, shook her head. ‘You really are lunatic. It won't be legal! It
couldn't
be legal.'

‘No, perhaps not. It is just a declaration of intent. I somehow don't think you'll want to break it.'

I indicated the chair, gave her the pen, put a large sheet of letter paper before her; and, with a shrug and a half-smile, she sat down and started to write. I looked at my watch. I just had time to be at the Theobalds' by five.

Giles was sitting on a rock by the side of the track under the umbrella-bay trees. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a yellow T-shirt with FRÉJUS ZOO in scarlet letters. I stopped beside him. He got up and came slowly to the car.

‘You look exceedingly smart. Cap and T-shirt, eh?'

‘You're late. Fifteen minutes late.'

‘Sorry. Were you worried? I promised faithfully, you know. I had to go shopping in Draguignan. For toothpaste and shirts. Remember?'

He clambered into the back of the car, leant over the seat beside me. ‘Did you see Mum? Was it all right?'

‘Saw her, yes. She sent all her love. She's going back to London next week … in a couple of days anyway. And we'll be going back then too.'

‘Going back? To London?' There was unease in his voice. ‘Did you talk about things? About me?'

I told him that we had, that it was all settled, that he was going to stay with me, Annie with his mother, and we were all going to pack the house up together. There had been no problems, just that she was a bit sad if he didn't want to stay with her, but she wanted him to be happy. I chuntered on in as soothing and generous a way as I could manage. He seemed to accept it all. There was no scream of delight, no baseball cap in the air. He just sat perfectly still, a plastic giraffe dangling from his hand over the seat.

‘Was she very sad? Mum. I mean,
she's
all right. It's just that …' He let it fade, and so did I.

Ahead the Theobalds' little house stood silent in the lateafternoon
sun, the terrace in cool green shade. I parked under a giant olive, and looked over my shoulder at the yellow T-shirt.

‘All right now? No worries? I think Mum will get quite used to not having you around. She's going to be very occupied with her job. With Rhys-Evans. I mean, you'd have been bunged off to boarding school anyway. She will have to be travelling a good deal. So in a way I think it has all worked out pretty well. Don't you? She loves you very much, and really does want what is best for you, and I said that you and I thought that being here, living at Jericho with me, was best for you. At the moment. Right?'

He nodded. ‘Thanks. I'll see her when we go back? To pack up, I mean. I've got some things I want. My things. To bring here. But I will see her?'

I got out of the car and Dottie leant out of an upper window. We waved, Giles slid on to the gravel track.

‘We had a super day at Fréjus. Really ace,' he said.

Apparently the storm had gone over. For the present.

Dottie had a bundle of clothing under her arm, a packet of washing-powder in one hand.

‘I've got rather behind. Arthur's stuff. It was great fun at the zoo but it does take up rather a lot of the day. How did
your
day go? You look a bit weary.'

I followed her up to a small shed stuck on the side of the house where there were two concrete sinks. One for soaking, one for washing, she explained, turning on taps.

‘You were very kind to take him off. Baseball caps and T-shirts. It was, more or less, all right with his mother; less rather than more. Fairly rocky, really. But I won. Thank God! I even got it in writing! Imagine …'

She sprinkled a spray of blue powder into the gushing water, steam rose, she dumped the bundle and stirred it about with a strong arm. ‘Good,' she called over the rushing tap. ‘I
am
glad. Well done. He's been a bit preoccupied all
afternoon, as you can imagine. Really, that safari park place.' She dried her hands on her apron, turned off the taps. ‘There are more wild beasts outside the compounds than inside. I can't tell you how awful Mr Marx's masses can be on holiday. Dreadful gobbling Germans with Nikons and Leicas. Fat, white British in colour supplement prints and brown socks in sandals. Overweight French from the north eating ice-creams, in curlers, throwing things at the animals.
At
them. One despairs. However …' She took up the pack of detergent. ‘However, he liked it all. A bit surprised by the giraffes. They are rather tall, of course, if you are ten years old.'

We walked up the path. On a top meadow Arthur was pushing a giant mower. Dust and grass fragments whirled about him like a desert storm. Giles was just behind.

‘He seems pretty well settled, you see.' Dottie was shading her eyes against the paling sun. ‘I'm glad that you've got him. He's interesting. Far too sensitive really, but that's not altogether a bad thing, controlled and channelled. You'll see to that, won't you?'

I said I would, and realized just how tired I was. My legs felt as pliable as pipe-cleaners. Sensing this, probably because of my reluctance to speak at all from sheer exhaustion, she called up to Giles, waved arms, pointed at me, and steered me back towards the car. ‘Off you go. Take him back, he's had his tea.' And then, suddenly, she leant up and kissed my cheek. ‘Jolly good. I really am most terribly glad for you both. It can't have been fun, today.'

We had reached the car. I opened the door and saw the pink plastic Monoprix bag on the seat. ‘I bought him some shirts. Couldn't think what neck-size he was. So he'll have to wear them open.'

Dottie laughed and pushed me gently towards the car as Giles came running down the track. ‘Go back. We'll see you tomorrow. Off you go now.'

*

At the hotel, Madame Mazine handed me the key to the Pavilion and a white envelope and said how hot the day had been. I opened the envelope in the middle of the little lobby. It was from Florence. She couldn't make this evening but would it be all right tomorrow? She could be free (I assumed of Thomas) between three and five. Would I let her know? I scribbled ‘Perfect. I'll be waiting' on the back of her card, sealed it in the envelope, and asked Madame Mazine to have it taken across the square and I told her that tomorrow we'd be leaving the Pavilion for Jericho. She showed no surprise, merely smiled, bowed, and put the envelope in the pocket of her pinafore, and I went out into the courtyard to the Pavilion.

‘Can I go and watch the telly in the bar, if you are going to start packing and things?'

I pushed the key into the flimsy door. ‘What makes you think I'll be
packing?
I'm half dead. I've been to Nice and back. It's a journey.'

He eased himself into the room while I opened shutters. ‘You said we were leaving. I understood that part. For Jericho. Tomorrow. So you'll be packing, won't you?'

‘In a little while. So go and watch the telly. I just want to lie down for a couple of minutes. I'm really rather bushed.'

I thought that he'd gone, and went over and crashed down on to my hard straw-filled mattress, hands behind my head, but he was suddenly beside me. He took off his baseball cap, chucked it across to his own bed, sat on the edge of mine, the plastic giraffe in his hand.

He forced it to ‘walk' slowly, in staggered moves, up my chest. ‘I really am glad,' he said. ‘Thanks. Will it be all right to call you Dad, and not Will?'

‘Perfectly all right. But why?'

‘Well …' He fisted the giraffe and pushed it into the pocket of his jeans. ‘Well, you really are now, aren't you?'

Jericho lay still and silent, like a sleeping dog in the sun.