Falling (4 page)

This was bad news.

‘Were you thinking of it as a summer place, then?’

‘Not particularly. Just somewhere I can bolt to when I’m free.’

When she said this, I had the distinct impression that she did not expect this to be often, and as the implications of this began to sink in I wondered whether I had made the wrong choice in Mrs
Redfearn. Then she said, ‘I suppose you don’t happen to know somebody round here who could look after the place for me – the garden, I mean – while I’m
away?’

‘I might. I’ll think,’ I said.

‘Are you going to do a drawing?’

‘I don’t think there’s any need. You’ve been very clear about what you want. Of course it would be nice if you could choose about the planting. When are you going
away?’

‘Oh – on Monday. I’ll be leaving here tomorrow evening.’

It’s amazing how fast and how much one can think in a split second. I thought, It’s no go, there’s not enough time, if I agree to do the garden I’m keeping my options
open, if I do the garden for her I could make her spend quite a lot of tomorrow with me, find out more about her, she’ll be back, you don’t buy a cottage and then
never
live in
it, I think she does like me in a wary sort of way and that’s a start. Anyway, there’s nothing to be lost by going all out for the hours that are left. Limitations – of any kind
– are simply a challenge. You used to enjoy them, remember? I got to my feet so that I could look down at her.

‘I’ll do your garden for you – dig it and plant it and then keep it tidy. But I’ll need some tools, a fork and so on. Perhaps if we went to the local garden centre we
could get them and you’d have a chance to pick out a few plants – and bulbs, it’s not too late for them.’

‘I’ve got an awful lot to do tomorrow. The book-unpacking and the kitchen things.’

‘I happen to be entirely free tomorrow, and there’s hardly anything I like better than getting a look at other people’s books.’ Then, because I sensed at once that I had
gone too far (and whenever I recognize this I also know that it is essential to seem utterly unaware of it), I added, ‘I know it’s always embarrassing to talk about money, but I charge
four pounds an hour – for the gardening, of course, not for getting tools et cetera.’

‘How do I know how many hours are involved?’

‘Well, I reckon it would take me about a week to clear the garden and replant, and then I suppose half a day, say four hours a week, less in winter and possibly more in the spring and
summer. That’s the dicey part of it. If you are away, you would have to trust me to put down my hours.’ I let myself smile fleetingly at the very idea of dishonesty, before saying,
‘I could, of course, produce some quite splendid references if required.’

‘By splendid, I take it you mean snobbish.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Don’t bother. You’re on.’

She was on her feet now, and walking me to the door.

‘What time would you like me to come tomorrow?’

‘About ten?’

‘Fine. Thank you for the tea.’

I walked down the weedy path to the gate and when I turned she was in the process of shutting the front door – as though she had been watching me but did not want me to see.

A fairly conventional encounter, that; nothing remarkable had been said by either of us; nothing, or nothing very much, had happened. It had been studiedly impersonal, we had not even exchanged
names.

That evening I ran and reran the events of the day. I have a good memory, particularly for dialogue, and remembering exactly what someone has said can often spark perceptions that I had been
unaware of at the time. Not only do the words recall the voice, they recall the eyes, the posture, the whole set of the body (body language is, I believe, the modern term for it), thus providing a
quantity of retrospective information. And that was what I was after, what, given the short time available, I desperately needed. One cannot expect to be successful in pursuit of a shadow or ghost.
Her going away so soon (and for how long?) made speed and accuracy of the essence. Her going was a blow; on the other hand her appearance had been a delightful shock.

Every now and then, during that evening and night, I would stop all thoughts and plan to recapture her face as I first saw it, the wary grey eyes that were shaped, I could recollect, like
horizontal diamonds from a pack of cards. Far into the night, as I was wondering what shape they would become when she smiled, I realized that she hadn’t. She had laughed when I had made the
remark about art critics, but then she’d thrown back her head and, anyway, I’d thought she was laughing at me and when that happens I can’t think or observe anything at all. But
she said she hadn’t been, and she had not smiled once. Was she deeply, chronically unhappy? Or had she simply never experienced carefree pleasure (true of far more women than is generally
known)? Who was Mr Redfearn? I had a strong feeling that, alive or dead, he was not with her. None the less, it was one of the first things I must find out. The second was what she was going away
for, and for how long. And, come to that, where?

I finally slept, with several possible but, of course, no certain answers to these questions; the one thing that I knew was that I was on the brink of what I prayed would turn out to be the
adventure of my life.

She had meant to leave for London early in the afternoon but that had proved impossible. Originally, before Carter had called, she had meant to stay at least until the Monday
morning. Six o’clock – she looked at her watch – six
thirty
on a Sunday evening guaranteed the worst weekend traffic, and when she
did
get back at whatever time it
was, she would have to pack and write notes for the daily and leave messages on people’s answering-machines and do all the things that had to be done before going away, in this case for an
unknown amount of time. Thank God she had a garage for the car, she thought, as she eased herself into it. She had parked in front of the cottage to load up, although in the end there had been
remarkably little to load: just her clothes and her typewriter and briefcase of papers. Now she looked back at the cottage to check that she had turned off all the lights. It was dark – a
vaguely darker silhouette against a sky lit by a murky moon. And I turned off the water, she thought, and doused the fire and shut all the windows. She had reached a stage of fatigue where she
wanted to go back and see that she had locked the door, but the difficulty of wrenching the key in the lock was so recent that she knew it would be dotty. Now. Up the hill, over the canal bridge
and then first turning left. After that it was plain sailing for about fifteen miles to the M40. She threw her hat into the back and turned over her Glenn Gould tape – the partitas this time.
Seatbelt, a cigarette and she was off.

The Mercedes’ headlights made the trees and hedgerows look like some unearthly ballet set; it was well equipped in this as in all things. I do love my car, she thought. I shall actually
miss it. But when she came back, there it would faithfully be; it would not have sought another owner, nor crashed itself. In these ways it was definitely more reliable than husbands.

As she approached the bridge, she saw that someone was sitting on the right-hand parapet. A man. He kissed his hand to her as she passed – an elegant and romantic gesture of the kind more
read about than experienced. It had been Mr Kent, she realized. How odd that he should be there just as she went by. Had he been trying to stop her? No, he had merely been saying farewell in a
rather unmere sort of way, and he’d said something about living in a boat temporarily on the canal. There was nothing odd about his being there. On his way back from the village pub most
likely. He had offered to stay and help her pack the car and shut up the cottage, but after the whole morning and a late sandwich lunch with him she’d had enough – wanted to be on her
own in this new place that was now hers.

But he had been helpful, especially with the books. If she had known that they were going to send for her
and
expect her to hang on right through the picture, she would not have had the
books sent down at all. But, given that she’d got them there, it had seemed better to unpack them, although if the cottage was left to itself long enough, damp would prevail. Perhaps it had
been mad to take on a second place – particularly somewhere completely strange to her, where she knew nobody and had no ready-made contacts that would enable her to find someone to look after
it when she was away. But she’d wanted the cottage to be away from everyone she knew; had not wanted that crowded, frenetic weekend society experienced from staying with friends in their
weekend places – drinks, lunches, drinks, dinners. She had wanted somewhere quiet, where she was unknown and unnoticed and could work and sleep and read in peace. Anthony had offered to come
down with her to help her settle in, but she had refused. And so she had ended up by allowing a total stranger to help her. It had been odd, coming back from her first visit to the village shop to
find him apparently hanging about – almost as though he was waiting for her. She had felt a vague sense of alarm at the sight of him, but it turned out that he was simply wanting a job in the
garden (useful and reassuring); on the other hand, she had later realized, he hardly had the voice of a genuine jobbing gardener. This had struck her after he had made that really rather surprising
remark about art critics, then asked a series of questions that were unexpected and – although it was hard to say how – impertinent.

But long before then she had implicitly engaged him by asking him to come back in the afternoon. If the call from America had not come a few seconds after she had encountered him, she might well
not have asked him back – might not have engaged him at all? Well, if he turned out to be too chatty and generally time-consuming, she could always tell him to go away, say that she wanted to
do the garden herself, anything. That problem, if it was one, was far away; she expected to be stuck in Los Angeles for at least two months, possibly three. A peevish way of putting it.

She started to enumerate all the possible advantages. She would escape a good deal of the English winter. She would be able to go to New York and Mexico for short breaks. Money would not be a
problem for at least two years. She liked working with George. And finally, but by no means of lesser significance, it would be an enormous relief to be somewhere where she
knew
she would
not bump into Jason and Marietta, which during this autumn had seemed to happen with a regularity that she would have liked to call monotonous, except that it left her gasping inwardly with pain.
And rage, she reminded herself – hang on to the rage, whatever you do.

But even after twelve years, ten of them divorced from him, her grief and . . . not shock but the memory of shock was there, and humiliation, wounded pride and subsequent anger had always to be
deliberately invoked. But not now, she thought, you’re getting away from all that. And really you’re away from it anyway; you don’t have to worry about how to divide your time
between work and love; you can dress to please yourself; you can read in bed all night if you want to; you can skip meals, spend too much money on your car, buy a cottage on impulse – in
short, please yourself. Pleasure was all very well, but I don’t
enchant
or
delight
myself, I need someone else to do that – or, rather, would need, if I wasn’t too
old for it. Work is the thing at my age, and jolly lucky to have it. But she didn’t want to start thinking about that now.

In order not to have to try too hard, not to think about it, she pressed the play button for the tape. Bach streamed into the car and into her; passion and logic locked together to the
enhancement of each – an aspect more noticeable in him than in any other composer she could think of. She could see the motorway ahead and hoped that the partitas would last out.

She had thought that the drive from North Oxfordshire plus all the things she had to do when she got home would have tired her enough to make her want to sleep, but they hadn’t. She had
had a hot bath, hoping that it would release some of the nervous tension she felt at the immediate prospect of the trip, but it had not. Now she lay on her back in the dark trying to bore herself
to sleep. She went through her lists; the messages left on her answering-machine, what she had done about them; she couldn’t ring Katya because she went to bed long before eleven thirty, so
she had left a long message explaining what was going on and saying she’d call from the States. Other messages, too boring to enumerate even if one was aiming at tedium, had taken a good deal
of time. Then there were notes for the caretaker of the flats and her Portuguese lady who cleaned for her. Then the packing. She decided to take with her all three drafts of the play as well as the
film script – all of them likely to contain alternative scenes that they might think they wanted her to write. It would save time if she had already written them, and spirit, since they never
used their own suggestions once they had seen them in the flesh, as it were. She wasn’t going to think about any of that. She thought about Katya; she spent a lot of her life doing that, and
worrying about her fruitlessly, ineffectively and, she suspected from Katya’s point of view, irritatingly. She had had Katya when she was twenty-three, married to Stach and called Mrs
Varensky. It had been after she had realized that Stach drank far too much, and before she had known that he slept with other – several other – women. The drink she had excused on the
grounds that after his frightful battle and subsequent crash-landing in the Spitfire, he had suffered an injury to his spine that left him in continuous and sometimes agonising pain. Drink, while
it did not alleviate the pain much, did alleviate what he felt about it. It certainly alleviated what he felt about what
she
felt about his infidelity. ‘I shall not
leave
you,’ he would reiterate, as though that was the only thing she could legitimately mind. ‘I shall always be a family man.’ And he had looked at her with his pale green eyes
snapping with sardonic self-mockery. She had been crying that first time, and he wiped her face caressingly with two fingers, licked them and twitched his nostrils with a kind of delicate distaste.
‘Just how I imagine the Dead Sea.’ He had managed, she had thought afterwards, to have a new woman exactly when she had become resigned to the one before.