After Purple (51 page)

“Couldn't, wouldn't … what difference does it make in any case? All I know is that's not
your
responsibility, Adrian, not any more, it isn't. The National Health was good enough for
me
, Thea, and I had complications. I can't think why he had to
choose
a private hospital.”

“Safer,” Adrian mumbled. “Less publicity.”

“Oh, of
course
,” cooed Janet. “The nuns would hush things up for him, wouldn't they?”

“What d' you
mean
?” I said. “The casualty was closed at Hammersmith. I
had
to go to St Maur's.”

“
Had
to? At a hundred and twenty pounds a day! I suppose you
had
to have a room of your own, and four-course meals, and all the frills, and top-notch specialists. I might have said the same, Thea, but it wouldn't have got me far.”

I glanced at her cherry lips, her strawberry cheeks. She'd been eating four-course meals since the day she was weaned, even in the womb, perhaps. I nudged my denture with my tongue to make it slip a bit. “Actually,” I said, “I didn't have much of a mouth to eat at all.”

“I'm sorry about that, Thea. Of course I am. We
both
are.” (I hated that “both”. I could almost see the Morton Ring of Confidence binding spouse and spouse together.) “But it only makes Leo's behaviour all the more despicable.”

“What's he
done
, for heaven's sake? Where's he gone?” My biscuit was just a shattered mass of crumbs now, as Leo dwindled further and further away from me.

“Do you realise, Thea, how much that total bill was?”

“Yes,” I lied. I didn't, but I couldn't bear to see Janet purse her lips over all those accusing noughts. X-rays and stitches and Confession and Raspberry Ripple would all be charged as extras. It wasn't just Janet — it had always been the same with Adrian — totting up extravagances, nagging about waste. He'd made me keep accounts in little red-ruled cash books with carbons underneath. “Don't buy English Cheddar. Brown eggs are a con.” Bills took all the pleasure out of life. All that soapy Irish cheese and sparrow-size anaemic eggs and slaving away at extra coaching to pay for night-storage heaters which were never hot when you wanted them, and buying dreary things like toilet rolls in bulk, so you hadn't got the cash for impulse Baskin-Robbins.

Leo didn't live like that. Leo got credit from Pakistani grocers and shopped at Fortnum's with money he owed the Inland Revenue. Leo had guts and spirit and the most expensive cheeses in London. If he avoided bills, it was only because he opposed them on principle. The hospital thing was probably just his gesture against the Catholic Church, or against the iniquities of private medicine or the sex life of the nuns.

I was feeling better all the time. It was only a matter of a paltry little bill, not the death or accident I'd dreaded. Leo was merely hiding somewhere to escape his creditors. Or maybe the nuns had forced him to get a proper full-time job. He was probably doing overtime — that's why he was out. Even if it was a residential job, he'd soon be back with the money in his hands. Janet and Adrian treated bills like some disaster — I had feared a real one.

“Don't worry,” I said airily. “They'll sort it out between them.”

“Oh,
will
they?” Janet banged the drawer shut. “Well, it certainly won't be any thanks to
you
, Thea. You didn't exactly help matters, by filling in the form with Adrian as your
husband
. The Accounts Department were totally confused. You shouldn't be so careless.”

I suppose she thought I muddled up my men by mistake, like all those dreary medieval kings, endless Henrys and Edwards with only their numbers to distinguish them. Oh, no! I had every right to claim Adrian as my husband. He was far more mine than hers. I'd lived with him nearly six and a quarter years, whereas she was just a beginner. Adrian and I had screwed one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three times. I grinned to myself. I doubt if Janet had even made three figures.

“It's not
funny
, Thea.” Janet crashed the cups together and flung them on a tray. “Adrian's got enough to worry about without getting mixed up with summonses.”

“
Summonses
?” It was a strange word like blancmange, a word you could choose as a mantra and say over and over until the world calmed down again and Leo returned from his residential job. I should have left a note for him, so he could phone me at Twickenham and meet him on the next train back again.

“Yes, I'm afraid they're suing him, Thea.” That was Adrian.

He seemed smaller, somehow, when Janet took the floor. She looked as if she'd like to pile him on her tray and stack him with the cups.

“But he's got a job,” I objected. “He's working overtime. He'll pay.”

“
Pay
!” brayed Janet. “You must be joking. He's already sent the bill back twice. He said it was
nothing
to do with him at all and that he signed the form in a state of shock and under pressure, without even understanding what it meant.”

“Oh, I see …” Perhaps I could get a job and pay myself. Worth it, just to have him back again. I'd be his saviour then — drag him out of hiding, redeem him from the law courts.

“Look, leave it to me,” I said. “I'll go to the Burton Bureau in the morning. They've got a job still waiting for me more or less. Receptionist in Mayfair. I owe it to Leo, really. I mean I …”

“
Owe
it to him? Have you
any
idea what … ?”

“Janet, I'd rather you …”

“I'm sorry, Adrian, but I think she ought to hear.”

“Yes, but not just at the moment, when she's …”

Janet cut him short. “D'you know what he told the nuns, Thea? That he hardly knew you at all. He was simply an odd acquaintance who happened to be around when you fell.”

Odd acquaintance. Fell
. The words crashed like a paperweight against my mouth. Janet hadn't noticed. She was shaking out the tablecloth as if it were Leo's limp and mangled body. Adrian came and sat beside me on the sofa. His whole body seemed to bend and ache towards me. I could see “darlings” seeping out of him, but he had to dam them up again when Janet flounced and frowned.

“Where … is … he?” I whispered. I tried to get the words out straight, but my mouth was wounded again and all the syllables seemed to stick and jar together. Adrian was almost holding my hand. He had inched his fingers along the sofa until our thumbs were touching, then left them there until Janet turned her back.

“He's … er … left the country, Thea.”

“Run away,” rammed Janet. Words like holiday and birthday sounded almost friendly now, compared with the venom she squeezed into those three short syllables.

Gone away run away summonses blancmange
. Nothing meant anything any more. Words were just strings of letters curdling in my head —
halibut left the country odd acquaintance fell
… I hadn't got a lover any more or a religion or a husband. I hadn't even got a bed or house or a shelter any more. Not even a front door key.

“Er … did he leave me a … ?”

“
No
,” pounced Janet. “He left
nothing
. No explanation, no apology, no address, no …”

“So how d'you know he's gone, then?” Still hope. Still a tiny trickle of hope. He might be at the Classic. Or even at the ballet. People gave him tickets to the ballet.

“Look,” I shouted. “He may be simply out. He's
often
out in the evenings. I
did
try Otto's, but that was earlier. He could be back there now. It's only business, actually. You see, Otto's a sort of expert on …”

“Otto — ” Janet lingered over the name as if it were one of the germs her latest cleaner hadn't reached — “has gone with him.”

“Oh,” I said.
Otto. Odd acquaintance
. I tried to think of shoe-boxes in Finchley. Only business. Only Chinese porcelain. They'd probably gone together to inspect a vase. It could even be a phoenix. Perhaps Leo had planned a surprise for me — another
feng huang
preening its wings in greeting as I walked in tired from Lourdes. I'd spoilt the thing by arriving back too soon, but he wouldn't have to know that. I could stay at Adrian's till Saturday and then slink back as if I'd just stepped off the plane and find him and the phoenix risen from the ashes.

Funny, though, that he'd been in touch with Janet. He'd never met her in his life. Otto didn't bother with people who knew nothing about Ming celadons or eighteenth-century monochromes or
blanc de chine
or
hua shih
. All Janet collected were twopence-off coupons cut out from
Woman's Realm
or new superior foot deodorants. I stared at her pursed lips, her podgy hands. She was lying to me, that was it. She was furious about the bill and trying to get her own back. She was probably even jealous because she'd guessed that I had wilder comes than she could. All she wanted was to scare me out of the house.

“I don't believe a
word
of it,” I yelled. “Leo wouldn't confide in you. You haven't even met him. He'd
never
come down here. And Otto even less. Just because you're …”

“Hush, Thea.” Adrian inched his fingers a centimetre nearer.

“Leo
phoned
, darling. It was the day you went away yourself — the Saturday. The call was very brief. He just said …”

“
Brief
? Downright rude, I'd call it, if he didn't happen to be a friend of yours.” Janet was furious about that “darling” and was trying to pay me back. She made the word “friend” sound like the Gestapo.

“Janet, I'd rather handle this myself.”

“She's got to know sometime, Adrian. You can't wrap her in cotton wool for ever.”

So I was “her” now, was I, just to make it clear all further “darlings” would be confiscated. She turned to face me, her huge breasts quivering through the smock. “Leo simply said that he had to go abroad, so you couldn't live there any longer. No explanations. Nothing. I think he expected Adrian to take you in, there and then. Doesn't he realise Adrian's
married
, Thea? I mean, it's a bit of a cheek, isn't it, to …”

“Look, why don't we leave it till the morning?” Adrian's voice sounded grey and almost wounded. One hand grasped my own, the other limped lamely after Janet. He seemed to be physically torn between the two of us. “We'll all feel better then.”

Janet totally ignored him. “Well, anyway, Adrian was decent enough to catch the very next train up there and try and sort things out. It was most inconvenient, in fact. We had to cancel a very long-standing …”

“Janet, I don't see any reason to …” Adrian was slumped in on himself, spine hunched and flinching like an old man's. Janet dislodged him from the sofa and sat down there herself.

“Leo wasn't in, of course. Or if he was, he wouldn't open the door. Adrian left a note and phoned at
least
six times, all through that day and the next. But not a squeak from anyone. So yesterday, up he goes again. This time, I went with him. It's not just a question of where you're going to
live
, Thea — Leo may believe in bigamy, but I'm still a bit old-fashioned, I'm afraid — it's this whole hospital business. I'm
not
having Adrian saddled with lawsuits and unpleasantnesses just because your … boyfriend decides to …”

“He's
not
my boyfriend,” I whispered. Odd acquaintance. Wildman. Lover, husband, God. Her hips were oozing into mine, her plump pink thighs edging me into the corner of the sofa. I could smell hair lacquer and Johnson's baby powder.

“Well, this time there
was
someone in, but it wasn't Leo — oh, no — it was Otto's brother, a most unsavoury chap called Jochen, wearing a sort of smock thing. He told us Leo and Otto had already left the country, if you please. He was
furious
with them himself. Otto owed him money and Leo had promised to sell some valuable pictures for him, which had simply vanished without trace. And there the two of them were, hitch-hiking to
Kashmir
, would you believe it.”

“Kashmir,” I whispered, trying out the word. It was simply a hole, a gash, a cry of pain. Words were meaning less and less every minute. I didn't even know where Kashmir was, except it was far too far. Somewhere strange and foreign and difficult, without a happy ending. So it was nothing to do with Chinese porcelain or shoe-boxes in Finchley. Nothing to do with business. More like an elopement or a tryst. I could see Otto bending over Leo's thighs in a lay-by off the autoroute. Other words were slicing through my brain — obscene, forbidden words — consummation, honeymoon.

The coffee and the Camembert were curdling with Kashmir in my stomach. I was car-sick as I sped along the motorways, sobbing and retching in the passenger seat, not daring to look round. If I squinted into the driving mirror, I could see Leo and Otto tangled up together in the back, one heaving shape beneath the car rug.

“Please,” I said. “I'd like to go to bed.”

Janet was double wrapping the last three Crawford's biscuits. They would probably stretch to Adrian's lunch tomorrow, with half a gherkin and the cheese rinds.

“Bed?”
she winced. She made it sound obscene. I hadn't said bed with
Adrian
, for heaven's sake. They had a spare room at the back where all their guests were segregated. Adrian and I had used it as a lumber room. We'd even screwed there sometimes, on the floorboards.

I dared not think of screwing. It reminded me of Leo — his long, thin, open, thrusting legs, and Otto underneath them. I turned to Adrian. Janet had pushed a tiny brush-and-pan set into his hands. He was meant to be clearing the crumbs off the table with it, but he was so distressed, he was missing most of them. I closed my eyes. Leo and Otto had arrived in Istanbul and were standing thigh to thigh in a small sleazy bathroom. Otto took his shaving brush and teased it down Leo's chin, across his chest, down further to his …