Frozen Music (15 page)

‘Actually, she's doing much better than I'd have expected,' Olivia said. ‘When I first heard Madox had departed I expected her to collapse completely; she seemed utterly to depend on him, but she's fine. Spends most of the time in bed, watching television, reading, that kind of thing. But she's quite happy. She has a rather enviable way of turning her back on anything that displeases her.'

‘You mean she refuses to face the truth?' Ulla said.

‘I suppose you could say that, yes.'

‘Abandon hope all ye who face the truth,' Linus said. ‘If we did all face the truth, we'd give up before we even got started on life.'

‘So you're advocating a life built on illusion?' Bertil asked.

Linus opened his mouth to answer, when there was a scream from Lotten, followed by violent coughing. He leapt from his chair and rushed across to his wife, kneeling by her side, patting her back. Ivar started to cry.

‘Good God, girl, what is the matter?' Olivia too had jumped to her feet.

A strangled ‘that' could be distinguished between coughs. And Lotten pointed an accusing finger at her plate. She was handed a glass of water and drank it down. Linus was still kneeling by her side, patting her back. She shrugged him off. ‘Chilli,' she snapped now she had stopped coughing. ‘A huge piece of chilli. That really could be very dangerous you know.' She turned to Ulla. ‘If I had been allergic to spices I could have choked to death.' Ulla looked as if in Lotten's case an allergy or two would not have gone amiss.

Giving his wife a worried glance, Linus said soothingly, ‘But as you're not, there's no real harm done. Thank God,' he added quickly. Ivar had stopped sobbing and was listening instead to Uncle Gerald telling him that regular bowel movements were the key to a contented life. Ivar wanted to know what a bowel was.

‘Well, I'm sorry, but I believe in speaking my mind,' Lotten said. ‘And…'

‘Why?' Linus had not meant to annoy her further, but he was genuinely interested in her answer. She frequently said how she believed in being direct and speaking her mind at all times and he'd often meant to ask her about it.

‘What do you mean, why?' Lotten asked between gulps of water.

‘I mean that people often say that, about speaking their minds, but I'm not sure that it always is such a good idea. People tend to get hurt and anyway, someone else's mind is so often both kinder and more interesting.' Lotten shot him a furious glance. Linus didn't seem to have noticed, but carried on in his quiet voice, ‘Of course I'm not saying that that's true exclusively of you. It goes for most of us.'

Opposite him, Bertil and Kerstin were discussing the merits of the recent Sibelius evening at the Concert Hall but the sharpness of Lotten's voice made them stop and turn to listen. ‘Don't be silly, Linus. One speaks one's own mind because how can one know anyone else's?'

‘One can't know for sure, of course, but one can try to imagine, try to put yourself in someone else's shoes and think about what they might have to say in the matter. I wonder what Strindberg or Meryl Streep would say in this situation, or Churchill or Mick Jagger or Mother Teresa…'

‘But you'd just be guessing so what would be the point?' Kerstin asked.

‘You could make an educated guess and it would be a very useful exercise because you would be forced to try to see a situation from someone else's point of view. At the very least it would make you have to stop and think.'

‘I'm sorry I'm so boring,' Lotten said.

‘Why do you always have to bring everything back to yourself?' Linus sighed. ‘I'm speaking generally. It just happens that you triggered off the thought. Do you have to take everything so personally?'

‘I think it's a very good idea, Linus,' Gerda said. ‘It makes for an excellent game. Bertil, Olivia, isn't that a good idea of Linus's? We all take on the part of someone else, then we pick a topic and argue it according to whoever we are supposed to be.' She beamed at them all from her place at the head of the table.

‘Bowels bowels bowels,' Ivar chanted, bobbing up and down in his chair.

‘And no, Ulla, you can't be Jesus Christ.' Bertil raised his glass to her.

‘I've always rather fancied myself as Charles the Twelfth,' Gerald said.

‘So what's the topic?' Olivia asked. ‘And I want to be Picasso.'

‘You always did, dear.' Bertil gave her a small smile.

‘Bowels, bowels, bowels,' Ivar singsonged.

‘Maybe not, dear,' Gerda said. ‘As for a topic, what about the Common Market, or that wonderful film, what was it called again, that they tried to censor.'

Lotten stood up. ‘Time for little people to go to bed.' She grabbed Ivar by the hand.

‘But we haven't even finished dinner yet,' Linus protested. ‘Surely it won't hurt for him to stay a little longer, just for once.' But he knew it was no use. Lotten was an expert in exerting her revenge under the cloak of concerned motherhood.

‘Yes, come on, Lotten.' Bertil smiled at Ivar. ‘It's not often I get to see my little grandson.'

‘There're meringues to go,' Olivia said. ‘With chocolate sauce.'

‘I'm afraid I believe in regular bedtimes,' Lotten said. ‘But you stay here with your family, Linus. I'll see you later.'

‘I don't want to go.' Ivar pulled free and clung on to the side of his chair with both hands. But his protest was pitiful in its futility as children's protests often are. Lotten's mind was made up and he was led sobbing from the room. Silence followed in their wake, then Lotten returned briefly to the dining-room to say goodnight. The few moments away from them all seemed to have restored her good humour, Linus thought. Either that, or it was the pleasure of having scored a point that made her smile.

‘Don't be too late, darling,' she said, honey-voiced, to Linus. She leant over his chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘You won't mind walking back, will you?'

‘Strange girl,' Uncle Gerald said, helping himself to some meringue and bitter chocolate sauce from the pyramid in front of him.

Holden signed me up to his gym the morning after the night we first made love; I had pulled a muscle in my thigh.

‘You're not awfully athletic, are you, my dear?' He had twinkled at me over breakfast in my kitchen. ‘But don't you worry. A few workouts and you'll be a new woman.'

‘Promise?' I asked sourly.

Holden just nodded in an earnest way. ‘Promise, baby. In fact, once you get into it you'll wonder how you ever managed before,' he said, the light of evangelism glinting in his eyes. He also mentioned that it was all about self-discipline. Well, that did it. Self-discipline was my thing (although sometimes I suspected that it wasn't at all and that was why I set such store by it). Anyway, I now rose at a quarter to six, four mornings a week. I had always lamented the fact that I wasn't a morning person and now, thanks to Holden I was, reluctantly. I walked through the quiet streets, admiring the blossoming cherry trees, the sound of birdsong from the garden square, and the superiority that came from being up and about when most other people were still tucked up in bed. At the bus stop stood a bench, how thoughtful, and on it was a huge turd. I suppose it could have been produced by a large and unusually athletic dog, but it wasn't that likely. I resolved never to sit on a public bench again. Cherry blossom, birdsong, large turds; had I been an artist I might well have chosen to paint the scene. The picture would be entitled
Life
. Whoever had constructed the universe must have had a sign above his desk saying
Remember the other side of the coin
. Sex – Shame. Baby – Pain. Love – Hurt. Cherry blossom – Turd. Life – Death. That theory of the earth being flat made a lot of sense to me; you have the nice side, the one
you sell to embryos thinking of becoming babies, with the sunshine and the pretty fluffy bunnies and the yummy food and love. The flip side you keep to yourself until they're past the point of no return. No wonder babies arrive screaming.

I was deep in thought when I narrowly avoided bumping into a man coming out from a block of mansion flats, a navy baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead. I mumbled an apology and for a moment our eyes met. We walked on our opposite ways, but I was sure I had seen him somewhere before. It was only as I tried to chase away the boredom of my three-mile walk on the treadmill that I realised that the man in the baseball cap was Barry Jones, hugely popular quiz-show host and the nation's foremost family man. And if it wasn't him, it was someone looking enough like him to be his twin.

A week later I saw him again, at almost exactly the same time, coming out from the block of flats, looking right and left under his blue cap before stepping out on to the pavement. I peered at him and before he had a chance to turn away I had established that it was definitely The Nation's Favourite Husband.

‘Doesn't Barry Jones live in St John's Wood?' I asked a colleague.

‘Yes, he does. Why?'

‘Oh, nothing.' I shrugged.

I could have set my watch by him. He popped out of the heavy oak door, like a cuckoo from a clock, albeit a silent, rather stealthy cuckoo, Wednesday and Friday, at 6 a.m. sharp, cap drawn low across his forehead.

‘He's cheating on his wife,' Arabella said when I told her. ‘No doubt about it.'

‘But this is Barry Jones we're talking about,' I protested. A man as famous for his perfect marriage to Tammy and their idyllic life with their three perfect, spotless children, as he is for his television work. A man who had been seen so many times with his arm draped around his wife's shoulders that ungenerous minds had accused him of having had it surgically attached. A man who had had more things knitted for him by little old ladies than a royal baby. Barry Jones? Surely not!

‘Don't be naïve.' Arabella sighed.

‘But this is the man “Who Restored the Nation's Faith in Marriage”.'

‘I think', Arabella said, ‘that the operative word here is man. So are you going to do a piece on it?'

‘I don't know. Probably not. I'm not in the business of wrecking people's lives truffling around for scandal, real or imagined.'

‘Odd.' Arabella shrugged. ‘I could have sworn you were a journalist.'

You get that sort of comment all the time when you work for a newspaper. I try to rise above it. ‘I'm a feature writer,' I said. ‘Not a reporter.' Then I threw a cushion at her. ‘I have my own rules and standards. All the same,' I caught the cushion as she threw it back at me, ‘I suppose I should tip off the news desk. It's my duty. And the man is a complete hypocrite. Anyone else and one might say it's nobody's business but his own, but this guy has made his name from being the perfect bloody husband.'

‘So tell the news desk.'

‘Do
you
think that Barry Jones is capable of cheating on his wife?' I asked Audrey on my regular Saturday-afternoon visit. (My mother liked visits on a Saturday afternoon; nothing but sport on the television.)

‘Of course he is.' She reached out for a second scone.

‘But Barry Jones. He represented The Cardigan for the association of English wool merchants last year.'

‘Clotted cream, darling? It's delicious. Cornish.'

‘Have you heard from Dad?'

‘He called this morning, actually. He says he's happy. Now try the strawberry jam; it's to die for.'

Holden rolled his eyes. We were having dinner at this new Indian restaurant and for a moment I thought the spices had got to him, but then he said, ‘Are you planning to start some kind of witch-hunt against this Barry Jones character? You know my opinion on that aspect of your career?'

‘I've told you hundreds of times,' I protested. ‘I am not an investigative reporter, I'm a feature writer. I don't snoop, well not much, nor am I interested in exposing the duplicitous love life of Barry Jones, but I should pass the information on to the news desk. That's my duty to my colleagues. In fact, it's my duty as a journalist.' Holden was shaking his head and muttering something about gutters, but I ignored him. ‘If he's not up to something,' I said, ‘then no harm will be done, but if he is cheating, well, then he's the biggest hypocrite in a decade of hypocrites and I don't see why he should get away with it. He isn't just any old bloke. What we've got here is a man who's made his name and his living from this whiter-than-white image. And, in his time, he's not been averse to pronouncing on the frailties of others. This guy has his own Christmas broadcast, for heaven's sake.'

‘Well, it's your decision, Esther.' Holden helped himself to some more Basmati rice. ‘I'm just afraid I don't share your fascination with the sordid details of other people's lives.'

Why did he love me when I was so full of faults? Pondering about whether and why he loved me tended to stop me from worrying whether or not I really loved him. Holden put his hand over mine and smiled into my eyes. ‘You look lovely when you're puzzled.'

I was pleased about that, seeing I spent most of my life wondering what the hell was going on. Maybe that was what attracted me to men like Donald and Holden; men to whom doubts rated somewhere down there with quiche. ‘Do you like quiche?' I asked him.

Holden looked surprised at the question, but then he smiled. ‘Real men don't eat quiche, isn't that what they say?'

I thought as much. I returned to the subject of Barry Jones. ‘I really care about getting this right,' I said. ‘Not only for Barry Jones and his family's sake. I set myself some pretty strict rules of behaviour. You have to or you open the door to chaos.'

‘Maybe you're a little bit obsessive about it. All those lists. Like today. I like Indian food, it's not that, but to be coming here because one of your lists said you couldn't go to an Italian restaurant again until you'd been to an Indian one seems, well, a bit odd.'