A Spanish Lover (27 page)

Lizzie raised her head. Her face was flushed and shining with tears, glistening with them as Davy's
sometimes
did when in a paroxysm of Sam-induced grief.

‘I can't face any more,' she said, dragging the back of one hand uselessly across her cheeks. ‘I just can't. I can't go on.'

Robert handed her his handkerchief.

‘Come on,' he said, half facetiously, half reprovingly. ‘Don't overdo it. It isn't the end of the world.'

‘It's the end of
mine
,' Lizzie said, blowing.

‘Thanks a million—'

She turned on him.

‘Why can't I say I've had enough?
Why
can't I? Why can't I speak the truth and say I'm at the end of my tether and that I haven't the heart to go on with this stupid, pointless, miserable pretence that we are waving when in fact we're drowning?'

‘We are not drowning.'

‘Oh yes we are!' she shouted, her voice rising. ‘We're giving up everything we've made, we haven't even got a home now, it belongs to the bloody bank, it always has, everything has, we've just lived a lie because everything's been built on sand, nothing's real, nothing's solid' – her voice rose to a scream – ‘and none of it's been worth it, has it, none of it, it's all just been a stupid, self-deluding charade!'

She was glaring at him, swollen-faced, open-mouthed. Before he knew what he was doing, and immediately full of sheer horror at himself, Robert lifted his right hand and slapped her.

Alone in the left-hand spare-room bed, Lizzie lay awake and stared into the not-quite-darkness, at the line of bluish light from the street lamp outside that fell in between the imperfectly drawn curtains, and at the yellow glow that came in under the door from the light on the landing that Davy could always sense being turned off, even from the depths of slumber.

It was her choice to sleep apart from Robert. It had never happened before, in all their married life, unless one of them had influenza, and Robert had assumed – indeed had said – that she was sleeping apart from him because she simply couldn't bear, any more, to sleep with him. That was true, but not in the way he supposed, and for some reason she couldn't seem able to explain to herself and thus reassure him. She couldn't, somehow, say that she couldn't bear to sleep with him, not because she felt he had failed her nor because he had slapped her, but because she was full of shame.

She had never, she thought, staring dry-eyed into nothingness, felt so full of shame. Those tears downstairs, those terrible, Niagara-like tears were not – or only partly, at best – at the prospect of losing the Grange, but mostly because of self-pity and because of Frances. She had, recently, been quite obsessed with Frances, obsessed with her flowering and her happiness and the exact nature of this most powerful and intimate relationship she was having, until she felt that she was behaving quite insanely. She wanted to stop thinking like this, but she didn't seem able to, it had become a drug-like habit, so that when Robert broke the news to her about the Grange, her first piercing thought had been that there was Frances climbing blithely up a rainbow into ever stronger sunlight while she, Lizzie, fell down into a black hole with something horrible roaring at the bottom. And what was worse was that Frances, climbing and singing, wasn't even looking at her, she wasn't looking anywhere but at Luis.

It was at this point of self-knowledge that the shame had begun, and the shame had made her tears flow faster than ever. How
could
she begrudge Frances her happiness? How
could
she let Rob think he had let her down and that she both couldn't and wouldn't go
on
supporting him and helping him in this crisis which was, after all, their crisis and not just his? How could she wail and scream like a spoiled child because something – all right, something loved and precious, but still only a
thing
– was being taken away from her? How could she fail herself and Rob and all she believed in and had always staunchly said she believed in? She couldn't think how she had behaved like that, but she had, and the thought of lying beside patient, worried, innocent, loving Robert while being herself quite polluted with all these horrible thoughts was intolerable.

So, to the spare room she had come, the spare room which would soon be someone else's spare room, or their children's room, or their old mother's. Lizzie gripped the edge of the sheet – could she even be the same person who had so optimistically, carelessly, bought those very sheets in Bath's antique market? – and stared and stared as if, out of the darkness, would come some image of calm and comfort, of forgiveness. But there was nothing. The darkness was remorseless and blank. Lizzie turned on her side and closed her eyes and felt the hot tears begin again, rising painfully behind her eyelids.

‘Oh,' she said to herself between clenched teeth. ‘Oh, I really am the lowest of the low.'

14

JULIET JONES SELDOM
went to London. Long ago, she had loved London, had felt a stir of anticipation as the West Country trains approached Paddington, but those enthusiastic days were long past. In her view London was not only now dirty and shabby but also un-English, her very institutions degenerated into sideshows for gawpers as if true personality had given way to cliché and caricature. But after she had seen William, and then Barbara, and after a visit from Lizzie, it seemed to Juliet that she must go to London and see Frances.

The visit from Lizzie had been very confusing. She had looked terrible, her hair lank, her eyes shadowed, and she had, while ostensibly coming up to the cottage to break the news about the sale of the Grange, plainly come to say a whole lot of other things about herself and Rob, and herself and Frances, which she could neither stop trying to say nor succeed in saying. She had sat by Juliet's fire, in the wickerwork chair Juliet kept filled with Paisley-patterned cushions, and talked and talked, nursing a mug of tea. But none of the talk had made much sense to Juliet, or at least, not until later.

Lizzie kept saying that they would have to rent somewhere to live.

‘I don't see', Juliet said, ‘that that is really so very terrible. As long as you are all together under the same roof—'

But Lizzie wasn't listening. She said she had put her heart and soul into the Grange, with which Juliet had gently agreed, and then she said she was letting Rob down so badly.

‘Why are you? In what way? You never have before—'

‘By being so angry,' Lizzie said.

‘About the Grange?'

‘No,' Lizzie said confusingly.

‘Then—'

‘I can't make Frances listen,' Lizzie burst out.

‘But, Lizzie, this isn't Frances's problem—'

‘I know, I know. I
know
.'

‘Well, then—'

‘I can't focus on things,' Lizzie said, turning her mug round and round.

‘Perhaps that's shock.'

‘I don't know. It might be everything, worry, money, shame, fear. It doesn't really matter what it is, it just matters that I'm not
coping
.'

‘You're very hard on yourself,' Juliet said. ‘You've always carried so much. You're not to be blamed if you can't cope for a little while.'

‘But I don't know if I can't,' Lizzie said, still turning.

‘Perhaps I just won't.'

‘I think you must make plans,' Juliet said sturdily. ‘It's the only way. You must look for somewhere else to live and make plans about it.'

‘I can't,' Lizzie said.

‘Why can't you?'

‘I told you, I can't focus.'

‘Give yourself time.'

‘I don't want time,' Lizzie said, ‘I want a break, I want to be free of all this, I want something new.'

Juliet looked at her.

‘Don't talk like that,' she said sharply.

Lizzie raised her head.

‘Why can't I?'

Because, Juliet wanted to say, that's exactly how your father used to talk, and he never did anything about it so I grew to despise him saying it. It seemed to me nothing but selfishness.

‘Because it isn't true,' Juliet said instead.

‘It feels true to me.'

Juliet had had enough. She stood up.

‘I think you should go home.'

‘Yes,' Lizzie said. ‘It's where I belong, isn't it, after all?'

‘Don't be sarcastic.'

Lizzie stood up too and put her mug down on the table half covered, as usual, by the profusion of Juliet's sewing. She touched the nearest piece of fabric, a fold of rough blue-and-white cotton which made her think, abruptly and poignantly, of Greece and a holiday she and Rob had once had, as students, chugging among the islands on a series of boats that had smelled disappointingly of diesel oil and fish and not, as they had envisaged, of olive oil and lemons.

‘I become sole school secretary at Westondale next week—'

‘Oh good,' Juliet said. ‘Promotion?'

‘No. But at least no more Freda Mason.' She looked across at Juliet. ‘Frances brought her man down.'

‘Really?' said Juliet, who knew already, from William. ‘Nice?'

‘Yes.'

‘She seems so happy—'

‘Yes,' Lizzie said furiously, and then added, even more furiously, ‘there is nothing to be said for me just now,
nothing
,' and she fled from the cottage as if Juliet were chasing her out with a broom.

William, coming up to the cottage soon after, said Lizzie and Robert's nerves were on edge, most understandably, and this caused Lizzie to make very little sense. Barbara, met by Juliet in the dry cleaners' in
Langworth
, said that everybody, including William, was simply behaving hysterically. Juliet, turning all this over in her mind until she was sick to death of the subject, concluded that Robert and William were seriously worried about Lizzie; that Lizzie and Barbara were, for different reasons and from different points of view, jealous of Frances; that Robert and Lizzie and William and Barbara were all, and again for different reasons, resentful of each other and were equally determined, or unable, to articulate this resentment and thereby at least attempt to resolve it. All this inspired in Juliet a deep thankfulness for not being involved in family life herself, and a simultaneous resolution to go and see Frances.

She had never been to the office of Shore to Shore before, though she had heard plenty about it from both Lizzie and William. It turned out to be in a narrow building in an undistinguished street which appeared to be otherwise entirely lined with a succession of fast-food outlets of different nationalities, all clustering together for comfort. There was a horrible amount of litter, and a miasma of frying and soy sauce hung in the air. Between the shabby plastic facias advertising kebabs and satays and fish and chips, the façade of Shore to Shore shone with a quiet sobriety, its windows full of plants framing a poster of the Roman amphitheatre at Lucca, now an oval Italian piazza, russet and ochre and in perfect crumbling taste. Juliet pushed open the door and was greeted by the smell of coffee.

Frances, across the room, was on the telephone. She waved at Juliet and mouthed that she would only be a moment. Another girl, with long, smooth nymph's hair, rose immediately from behind a desk, and came over saying she was Nicky.

‘And I'm Juliet.'

‘Frances is expecting you. Shall I take your coat? Would you like some coffee?'

Juliet surrendered her coat gratefully. It was, as it always was and as she always forgot it would be until it was too late, ten degrees warmer in London at least than it was on her own windy heights. She looked around approvingly.

‘This is charming.'

‘Lizzie did most of it,' Nicky said. She put Juliet's coat respectfully on a hanger.

‘Please don't bother. It's not that kind of coat, it doesn't expect such treatment.'

‘It's no bother,' Nicky said, putting the coat away in a cupboard. ‘Nor would coffee be, if you would like it.'

‘I would. I would indeed. London always gives me a raging thirst.'

Frances put down the telephone and stood up. She wore a fawn wool trouser suit of a distinctly glamorous cut. She held her hands out to Juliet, smiling.

‘Juliet, I'm so pleased.'

They kissed across the desk. Nicky put a cup of
cappuccino
coffee down in front of Juliet. Juliet began dimly to feel that she was an unpaid extra in a television series about a modern businesswoman.

‘I'm taking you out to lunch,' Frances said. ‘Just round the corner.'

The telephone rang again, and then a second one began.

‘Juliet, would you forgive me—'

Juliet nodded, picked up her cup of coffee and took it over to a small sofa by the window.

‘I'm so sorry,' Nicky was saying into the telephone, ‘but I'm afraid the first Spanish holidays for next spring are already fully booked. Miss Shore is trying to organize more at this moment, and of course, if this comes off, we will let you know at once—'

Juliet's gaze roved round the room. It was charming indeed, with the kind of cool charm that she supposed
was
necessary in order to convey an air of efficiency. It wouldn't do to have an office that looked too homey, after all, just as it wouldn't do to be dealing with people whose appearance was in any way amateurish. Frances certainly didn't look amateurish. She looked – well, Juliet thought, I last saw her at Christmas standing below my bedroom window in a boringly standard fawn mackintosh, and although she is now in fawn again, she looks neither standard nor boring. She looks interesting and almost stylish and decidedly female. I wonder if her Mr Moreno takes her shopping for clothes in that possessive way some European men have (‘No, no,
chérie
, it cannot be the black, it must be the red, I adore the red'), and so forth? I wonder if she has started looking at herself differently to please him or because he has made her, so screamingly evidently, pleased with herself? I see she is wearing a ring too, though I can't from this distance see what sort of ring it is. How curious it is that, at the early stages in a relationship, people violently want to advertise their belonging to one another, and so often, later on equally violently, wish to obliterate any visible evidence of mutual dependence. Presumably Mr Moreno is still wearing the wedding ring he put on in order to pledge himself to Mrs Moreno and therefore has no extra badge of belonging to Frances, while Frances, the mistress …