Aunt Margaret's Lover (36 page)

Only the gin bottle, sitting on the bench opposite, feels jaunty. It has been crooned over, stroked with love, poured regularly and feels on top of the world. Its ancestors always said it was designed to create chaos and brought it up on the tale of a famous artist called Hogarth who actually made an icon to its power and called it 'Gin Lane', but it never truly believed that one so small could show such muscle. Now it knows its strength. Wink, wink, it goes at the other malcontents in the kitchen, king of the casde now. That nasty female friend down the road may have sent its brother to a trash heap and brought in the artillery of fresh orange juice and fizzy mineral water, but
she
hasn't been around for long enough. 'Busy, busy, busy,' says Verity to the gin
bottle
from time to time, 'busy, busy, busy with her lovely, lovely, lover.' Good, thinks the gin
bottle
, for I feed on loneliness best of all.

'Answer me, answer me,' cries Verity to this atmosphere of alienation. Doing her Sarah Bernhardt again, think the appliances. Better than Callas, mocks the wall. Upstairs the mirror and hairbrush draw closer together, remembering that once she was Snow White, and knowing that now she is the Wicked Stepmother, the Bad Queen, the Harridan. They wonder if they will be able to survive, being such puny, fragile objects.

But the telephone is not autonomous and it is suddenly wrenched from a soothing, long sleep by one of its companions up in Hampstead. Damn fool time to ring, ten o'clock at night, it thinks, but it has to oblige. If it doesn't, there will be gynaecological explorations the next day and British Telecom is renowned for employing engineers with hands like shovels, fingers like Cumberland sausages. It is rumoured that they do this on purpose to keep the equipment on its toes. So it beeps for the upstairs and rings for the downstairs and Verity, who is on the point of giving the gin bottle another thrill, puts it down in wonder. Margaret, she thinks, Auntie Margaret, she hiccoughs, Auntie Margaret back early from Paris.

Verity is muddled but clear on one point. Her friend is a very brave woman, a very brave and
wronged
woman. For Mr Perfect, Mr Simon Oxford Bloody Perfect is abandoning her brave, wronged friend and leaving her. Leaving her
for ever.
Oh, they may be in Paris now having a last fling, but Margaret must be weeping inside,
weeping.
Verity hiccoughs again and weeps herself. The question she wants answered is, if Mr SOBP can do such a thing when he seemed so nice, then what the fuck is Verity doing resisting Mark? He may have been an oppressive wally, he may have messed about from time to time, he may have been a bit cruel here and there, but he never went off to
Nicaragua
suddenly, did he? Tenerife once, using her money and not telling her - but
Nicaragua?
It was a bit bloody final. Cruel? Cruel? Mark was only on the baby slopes compared to that. In fact - Verity begins the long, slow crawl up the hallway - in fact, compared with all that, Mark is a gem. Which is why she sent him that funny recipe she once wrote.

Verity finds nothing strange about approaching the hall telephone on her knees. She quite often goes about the house like this at night, and early in the morning too. During the day she can become
homo sapiens,
can do her work sitting up even if the screen is a bit fuzzy, but at these other times it just feels better and safer to behave like most other mammals.

She answers the phone brightly, aware that cunning is required when you have been consorting with the spirit of the bottle. It is a man's voice, a familiar man's voice, a
very
familiar man's voice.

'Verity,' it says, 'I need you.'

'Good,' she says, 'come back. All is forgiven,' and she puts down the receiver with the slow care it prefers. That is the answer, then.

She is thinking now, thinking fast, but not on her feet -she is thinking on her knees as she ascends the stairs. A slow process, but with something positive to be gained now, unlike sometimes when she gets up to the top and forgets why she attempted the climb in the first place. Leaning over the side of the unwelcoming bath, she turns on the taps and pours in shampoo which produces peaks of white pearliness that make her sit back in wonder for a moment. Where did it all come from? She negotiates a more upright position and reaches for the bath oil, which she rubs into her head under the gushing water. Something is not quite right, for the foam is below her nose, instead of above it, but she works on at herself, bubbling inside with happiness. Old times, she says into the echoing tub, just like old times, as she rinses, and rinses, and rinses her hair. She gropes for a towel, is about to wrap it around her head when she smells it. Not a good smell. Not at all a good smell. Crawling along the passageway, dripping wet, laughing to herself, pulling the smelly old item behind her, she arrives in the bedroom. Made it, she thinks, and she hurls the towel at the linen basket, where it drapes itself grimly over the wickerwork. Not my fault, it says to the mirror and the brush. Too bloody right, they agree. All watch with concern as their owner teeters around, pulling open drawers for fresh underwear, rifling through the wardrobe for something exotic to put over the top of her unsteady body. She makes a game attempt at walking down towards the bathroom, but seems to be going backwards. She turns around and takes it backwards, which sort of works - although there are a few unexpected encounters with walls and bannisters on the way. Once in the bath she feels on top of the world. Water, she thinks, I must drink plenty of water. Bloody old Aunt Margaret keeps urging her to do this, so she will, she giggles, but she won't tell her that she is right - oh no. Smuggins with her bloke - well, now Verity has
hers
back .
..
Ha, ha. Ha
bloody
ha
..
. She slips her head under the water and guzzles. As she rises, grimacing and amused at the nasty taste, she thinks she is very obedient and that is why something good has happened to her at last. 'Good girl, Verity,' she says, staring at her toes, which wiggle of their own pleasurable volition.

Her legs! She stares at them as, by some strange Lazaran miracle, they rise up, one after the other, out of the sudsy water. They look like a gorilla's. Depilate. She tries the word out - finds it is jolly difficult - and reaches for the razor. Mark's beloved razor, left behind when he went, something she was not able to throw out. She begins the slow and careful task of removing unwanted hair - a sharp razor, this, very sharp, and her hands, although she tries to hold the razor down with both of them, are not very adept. The water begins to go red. Verity wonders why. More water, she thinks, and turns on the tap, guzzling again as it slooshes out. She leans back, warm and contented. Just for a moment she will rest - and then onward with the task of making herself beau tiful for him again.

The bath will never recover from the trauma. If a bath can have a Nightmare on Elm Street, this is it.

Half an hour later, Mark discovers what he takes to be his ex-lover's suicide. When his ring at the door went unanswered, he took the key from the flower pot and let himself in. He had lost his job and felt desperate. He needed looking after. He hunted her down, to find her here in a bright pool of gore. If the bath feels in need of therapy, it is nothing to what Mark feels he will need. Fucking women, he thinks, as he hauls her out. She comes to as he gives her mouth to mouth, and she responds in the only way a woman being made love to can. She closes her eyes as she kisses him back, for Mark's expression, in her opinion, is not all that it should be under the circumstances.

Jill props the letter next to the card from Paris on the mantelpiece. Both are from Margaret. The card says, 'Our consolation prize for missing skiing - this is
much
better.' She touches it, then the letter. No, she does not find the tale of Verity very funny, despite Margaret thinking she would. It comes too close to moments she has experienced herself rece
ntly
. April nearly here and she's the fool. Amanda is still not speaking to her properly, observing only the niceties, imparting information dutifully but full of reproach. Giles will be home for good soon, but although last year she looked forward to his return desperately, now it means nothing to her, as the days mean nothing, for there seems to be no happiness left in her world. She crosses to the window seat. This is where she has taken to sitting most days, half hidden in the curtains, knees drawn up, chin in hands, watching the gradual changes taking place outside, unable to participate on any but the most detached level. Every part of her feels bruised, the taking in of breath too real, too painful, asking too much of her. As she asked too much.

Why she did not just burn the card, she does not know. Perhaps there is some kind spirit somewhere who knows that its continuing existence has a purpose - that one day she will be able to look at the boulevard with its cafes and couples, see the little red arrow Margaret drew to denote their hotel room, and not feel bruised any more. So it stays, a reminder only of the darkest moment in her life. She is sure of that -there was never anything darker before and she would plead with any god that there should never be such a darkness again. She has not been in the room since. No doubt the red silk is still twisted and crumpled, hanging down from the bed in its coil of mockery. That was where it all began, and where it all ended. They should have gone to a hotel. Then at least she would have been left with a room that had blessed two real and open lovers, and not her and her ersatz attempt. Not attempt. Failure. Margaret and her man were the last real lovers in that room. She knows that now. She should never have tried to compete. Never.

Why she did not listen on that first occasion, she will never know. She was not quite hooked then: she could have rejected the prognosis, said 'Jolly good sex' and all that, and gone on her way. But no. She heard but did not listen. She did not listen because she did not want to hear.

'This is an affair,' he said. Why then did he stroke her cheek, caress her breast, as he said the words? 'This is a delightful, delicious bonus in our little humdrum lives, just for a time. You are married. I am married. And we will both stay that way. We understand that. Do we?'

She had let him kiss her as she nodded and replied that she did, of course. Two grown-up people, just a bit of fun and excitement among these here hills . . . But it had never been that for her and she thought she had managed to hide it quite well - the pain, the dreams, the terrible, terrible loneliness that being apart from him gave her. This is Love, she knows, and she must bear it alone. But everything is diminished in its light.

David, her dear, loyal, unsuspecting husband, became no more than a nuisance, something to be got round, but a compliant cuckold. His long trip to Japan made the meetings wonderfully often, completely abandoned, once or twice lasting for whole nights so that she could imagine what living with him would be like. Even when he said there had been others before her, she paid no attention. For was she not real, there, now, determined to stay? So there would be no room for future women. She was Future Woman. She would never give him up.

Giles and Amanda slipped
into near meaninglessness.
Amanda).
Poor, poor daughter of hers. Poor, poor grandchildren, having a grandmother who was demented and sick with grief when her lover did not see or speak to her for a day. They came into the kitchen, the children, on New Year's Eve. She had made an excuse. She had cheesecakes that had to be delivered - she had forgotten. She must do it, but she would be back for dinner. The shop was open late that night - a lie, but no one would check, everyone trusted her, and how
that
made the hurting twice as bad. The cheesecakes were on the bench, four of them, and she asked the children to help her carry them to the car. They were eight and ten -
eight and ten.
When the littlest stumbled in the yard, dropping his burden, she had screamed and screamed and screamed with rage - all the rage pent up for so long -hitting him across the head with her free hand, until Amanda ran out into the cold, only half dressed because she had been changing. She stood there shivering, with protective arms around her children, protecting them against their own grandmother who had saliva on her mouth and raw rage in her throat. But she had not abandoned the exercise. No, not she. She had
still
gone because the drug was too strong. In the car she had settled herself back, smoothed her hair, dabbed at her mouth and reapplied her lipstick. She arrived at his house looking as if she had not a care in the world, and had been let in by his surprised but always friendly wife.

'We are going away tomorrow,' she lied, 'and I forgot to bring you these. I am sorry to intrude on your - '

Then she noticed. They were not having a family party as he had said. There were no others there. He was sitting on the floor by the fire playing a card game. Plates and cutlery and the detritus of a meal were pushed to one side on a trolley. A meal for two. Early dinner. Brandy glasses by the cards. He was wearing little maroon leather slippers with his initials woven on the fronts in gold. Horrible things. She wanted to kiss them.

His nice wife suggested that she have a drink. She declined. His nice wife asked where they were off to tomorrow. She said Morocco - the first thing that came into her head, because of the leather slippers probably.