Casting Off (35 page)

‘You and Fenella.’

‘Me and Fenella.’

‘Well,’ he said, as he said goodnight to her. ‘Just one thing. I’m really honoured that you’ve told me. So will you go on telling me? I mean, whatever happens, will you keep in touch about it?’

She thought for a moment. ‘All right. I will.’

‘That’s a promise.’

She gave him a perfunctory hug. ‘I said I would.’

Two

July–August 1946

The water was amber-coloured in the sunlight as he stepped into it on the sandy gravel. The bank shelved steeply and he was soon up to his neck in the river. It was clear and wonderfully cool after the burning sun, and it moved unhurriedly past and round him. Bright weed streamed out below, like long green hair being endlessly brushed out. Some of the river was dangerous with currents, but this was a safe place where he had always come to bathe. He swam out and then turned on his back to float and drift gently. In the middle, the water reflected nothing but the sky, a delicate bleached blue, but near the far bank, where the trees overhung it, it was dappled with dark and oily greens. Beyond the trees, the terraces of vines shimmered, trembled in the white light. He turned to swim back to the opposite shore, which was decorated with pale grey rocks set in the stony ground.

He had taken to coming here in the mornings, had borrowed Marcel’s bicycle which he furnished with his knapsack filled with lunch and painting materials. He found a great need to get out of his rooms which, for reasons that he did not fathom, depressed him.

It had been strange, amazing, to find it all there: dusty, ill-kempt, but still with his furniture, his pots and pans, his easel, his paints and books and even some old clothes. We knew you would return, they said. There had been a welcome; the first night and day there he had felt heady with the reunion, had shaken hands, kissed cheeks, consumed quantities of
pastis
and coffee, asked after the health of children now grown, but then a kind of lethargy descended upon him and he began to feel alone. He had begun to sense that he was regarded as an outsider almost at once – when they were drinking in the cafe and he had asked what it had been like while he had been away. There had been a short, defensive silence – shrugs. Pierre, who kept the
épicerie,
seemed about to speak, but his father, who had always ruled the family and made his wife and sons work while he sat on a hard wooden chair outside the shop, grunted and he was silenced.

Early the next morning he had gone to collect his bread from Madame Gigot and she had remarked upon his limp. He had told her how he’d got it, and she had said, ah, yes, the war. The war had been terrible for all. But when he had asked after her family, she had closed up. Yvette, he had pressed, pretty Yvette, she must have made a good marriage by now. It had not been possible, she said. Her eyes, black as sloes, had regarded him without expression. Where was she? She had gone north, to Lyon. It had been necessary, many things had become necessary. She would not be returning. It was better not to speak of her in the village. Then she had sighed, slapped his baguette on the counter and wished him a good holiday. She knew, as everyone in the village seemed to, that he was only there for a short stay.

Then when he had gone to ask Marcel if he could hire a bicycle and asked whether Jean-Jacques, who had worked in the garage and was a cousin of Marcel’s, might know of one, Marcel had said that he was not in the village any more. He had been taken away – they had taken him in 1944 to work in Germany. He had not returned, and nothing was known of him. These were the only two pieces of information he elicited, and he quickly learned not to ask for more. There was a constraint: relationships had changed between people, and between him and them. So he felt lonely, isolated, sensing that the discretion came out of some shame, which in turn bred a passive hostility that he could neither fully understand nor overcome. Agathe, who used to clean his house for him and do his laundry, had died, Marcel’s wife had told him that first evening when he was dining in the little restaurant at the back of the café. She had had something wrong with her insides, had needed an operation, but by the time they had got her to Avignon to the hospital it was too late. He had cleaned up the place a bit, enough to be able to live in it, but then he had found that he did not want to be there, and so he had taken to these long days by the river, bicycling back when the sun had begun to sink.

This feeling of alienation, which he had not at all expected, drove him to think all the time of the people he had left. Of Nancy, with whom he had spent a last miserable evening. She had been stoic. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ she had said. ‘I suppose I sort of knew when you kept putting me off.’ It was useless, unkind even, to say that that had not been the reason: it had seemed useless and not particularly kind to say anything. And yet things had to be said. He had tried to protect her pride, only to find that she had none. ‘Yes, I did hope we’d come to something,’ she had said, rubbing the tears from her eyes, ‘but I do see that it was rather silly of me. You’re far more intelligent and interesting than I am.’

When he asked whether he might keep in touch with her, or whether she would prefer him not to, she had said, ‘Not to begin with. I’ve got to get over it, haven’t I? And I know people do.’ Well, he had said, write to him if and when she felt like it. ‘All right.’ They had parted in the street. He had seen her on to her bus – saw her standing on the platform, looking back at him before it moved off, and she began to climb to the top deck.

The next Saturday morning he had gone to Harrods and bought her a kitten. The pet shop there was noisy with the trills and whistles and squawks of captive birds. There were hutches full of smooth, secretive rabbits and smaller cages of mice, hamsters, a white rat, tortoises, and two pens with kittens. A litter of Persians, and one of blue Burmese. He chose one of the blue Burmese, a female – a queen, they said. While they were putting it in a cat basket, he wrote a note. ‘It’s time you had another friend. Love, Archie.’ Then he took it in a taxi to her flat. It protested loudly throughout the journey. He asked the driver to ring the bell and deliver the cat, and made him park a few doors away. He did not want to confound her with his presence, but he wanted to make sure she was in. ‘Don’t say you’re a cab driver,’ he said. ‘Just say you’ve been told to deliver the cat.’ From the back window he saw her open the door, the delivery made, and her look of astonishment and delight. She took the basket, the door shut and the man returned. ‘That went down a bit of all right,’ he had said.

That had been one good thing. She had sent him a postcard saying simply: ‘Thank you so much. She’s simply lovely.’

But other things . . .

He thought of Villy and her bitterness and wondered whether her hapless dependants – Roly and Lydia and Miss Milliment – would galvanize her into feeling that she had something to live for, or whether her hurt pride and her misery would simply infect them all with despair. Lydia was out of the worst of it – her boarding school would provide her with some other life – but Roly and Miss Milliment were trapped. He remembered Rupert once saying to him that the trouble with Villy was that she had always behaved as though her life was a secret tragedy understood by none. The tragedy, if that’s what it was, was no longer secret. Edward had always done more or less what he wanted, but knowing – because Rupert had told him – that this new woman had one, if not two children by him might have trapped him. What was the moral choice? To stay with Villy and let Diana what’shername fend for herself? To pay his way out of that, if he could afford to? Or to ditch Villy and take on his new responsibilities? He’d still have to pay for Villy, but that might be easier. Whatever he did, whatever he wanted, he must feel guilt. At least Rupert had made a clean break from that affair in France. When Rupe had told him about that, he had felt really sorry for him, for all three of them, because Zoë had Jack’s death to endure – and not just a death, but a suicide, surely harder to bear. He remembered that evening in his flat when Rupert had poured out his unhappiness and all the while he had kept thinking of Zoë and the look of extreme pain that had come and gone on her face when he had told her that Jack had loved her and thanked her for it. It had wrenched his heart: her saying that she expected he would think it very bad of her to fall in love, and then saying that she did not believe that Rupert would ever come back. On the evening with Rupert he had thought of their emotional symmetry and how it would save them both: they had only to tell each other these things that they had separately told him for all to be well. But such a solution proved too simple, and too dangerous for either to attempt it. Of course, he had urged Rupert, but Rupert had said that he could not possibly tell Zoë until he was honestly not in love with Michèle. And he
was
still in love with her. He could keep away from her, but he could not order his feelings about her.

He’d been drying off on the bank in the steady, burning sun. It was time for a drink and lunch. He fetched the bottle cooling between the two rocks in the river and drew the cork. It was a rosé of the region; light and refreshing. He unpacked his bread and cheese and the peaches. In the old days, he would have been looking at the scene before him as he ate, considering, planning what he would draw. Now he did not look; his mind’s eye was crammed.

Much later last year, at Home Place, he had gone for a walk with Zoë. It had been just before they had moved to London, to live in Hugh’s house, and he had asked her if that was what she wanted. She had said, ‘I think it will be
easier
– in some ways. Someone else about the place, you know.’

‘
Is
that easier?’

‘It does seem to be.’

‘Dear Zoë. Are you still grieving about him?’

‘I shall always do that. Not about Jack – but
for
him.’ Then, seeing that he did not understand her, she said, ‘I mean, I know now that he came back to be sure that I could manage without him, and he was right, I could. I do. But he didn’t
lose
his life, he gave it, and I grieve that he should have felt he had to do that. He was a very loving person, you see.’ She was silent a moment, and then, and he could hardly hear her, she said: ‘Probably the most loving person I shall ever know.’

He took her arm, and they walked on until he felt he could say, ‘Don’t you think it might be a good thing to tell Rupe about it?’

But she had recoiled from him at once. ‘Archie, no! I couldn’t. He wouldn’t understand! He’d be so hurt. And everything is so . . . fragile between us. I mean,
everything
– you know. It’s my fault. I don’t delight him, we don’t get lost together – we seem separately lost to start with—’ and she had stopped, trying not to cry.

He had put an arm round her then, and when she had recovered somewhat, had reiterated as steadily and gently as he could, ‘I still think you should try. I think it might surprise you – not be as you imagine.’

But she had said almost angrily, ‘You don’t understand, Archie! I know you think you do, but you don’t. Everything would be in smithereens.’

He had had to give up. He’d had another go at Rupert, to no avail, and then, hopelessly and thoroughly frustrated, he had left it. It wasn’t his business, he told himself, people could not be made to do even what was sensible and right. But, then, who was he to decide what was either of those things? The trouble about being outside any situation was that you couldn’t see the trees for the wood. Interference, for whatever reason, was simply a vicarious way of living.

At least I didn’t try to interfere about Clary, he thought, as he poured the last of the wine into his glass and found a Gauloise. God! He had wanted to! The more Clary had extolled his virtues, the more paranoid, selfish and manipulative Noël had seemed. And Mrs Forman too. At least there
was
a Mrs Forman – he was fairly sure Clary’s views on marriage stemmed from them. If Noël had been single, he would probably have trapped Clary as he had trapped his wife. Like a bomber, he seemed to need a serious crew on the ground to keep him operative. He had hated to see Clary so tired, made-up like some twenties film actress and all the fun knocked out of her.
And
having her writing got at, so that she was losing her way about it.
He
found it difficult to write, so he made sure that Clary would do the same. If that was true, and he betted it bloody well
was
, it was unforgivable. But he didn’t feel inclined to forgive that little creep
anything
. It was just Clary’s luck to come up against someone like that in her first job. She was such a whole-hearted creature, had always been so extreme in her feelings, that once she had decided she loved somebody, she would stick to them through any amount of thin. She was nearly twenty-two now – her birthday was this month and this was the first time for her. Of course she must be going to bed with him. The idea filled him with distaste, and something more than that. She had not
said
she was, but he was sure this was so. Those ghastly weekends she spent with him! She had told him a bit about that. Noël had his parents’ house in Barnet, a small detached house with a derelict garden. It sounded awful: nobody had lived in it since his father had died, but he had kept it just as it had always been – thick now with dust, Clary had said, a bit like Miss Havisham. She had said it was cold there – ‘But we wear our overcoats’ – and everything was rather damp. He had asked what they did, and she had replied that they went for walks and Noël played bits of opera on his gramophone – had he heard of Rosa Ponselle and Martinelli? – and she cooked chops and there was spinach in the garden. Noël read to her until two in the morning. He didn’t want the house cleaned because he didn’t want anyone to come to it. There was no hot water, but there was a gas fire in the sitting room. Clary clearly found it all romantic and exciting. She was, after all, very
young
– and young for her years, he thought, almost unfortunately so. He tried to remember exactly how he had felt at twenty-two and couldn’t honestly remember. He had been falling in love with Rachel and he had been both happy and very unhappy. He could not wish that for Clary, an unrequited, hopeless love. He remembered how she had laughed when he had made the foolish assumption that she didn’t want to go to France with him for the same reason as Polly. It was a bit much the way she seemed to think he was too old for anyone to be in love with him. That was extreme youth again. Anyone over forty was past it, poor old thing. He had asked how old Noël was – just to see – and she had said he was thirty-eight, but that he was one of those people who simply didn’t age. I see, he had said, before he could stop himself, he doesn’t age, he simply matures. She had looked at him with those amazing eyes in that absurd make-up and said, ‘Archie, don’t be sarcastic, everybody loves you. The whole family. You know that! Of course including me.’