Gracious Living (16 page)

She prepared a pasta salad in case he arrived early and tried to do some reading. But waiting consumed her, pushed the work aside, so she wandered into the garden imagining the pleasures of the hours to come. At one o’clock he rang from the library to say he was running late and not to expect him until four. He was most apologetic, a tutorial paper to prepare, and although she understood, she was nonetheless very disappointed; he had been home five weeks and she had seen more of the local grocer than she had of Scott.

One o’clock. Three more hours to fill. She picked up a book of
her mother’s on Barbara Hepworth, leafed through admiring the huge elegance of the sculptures. She tried the text but had little concentration for it and put the book down. It fell open at the flyleaf – ‘To the second sculptor in my life. With my love, Vivienne’. Ginnie smiled and decided that exercise not art would see her through the hours.

She changed into her bathers and went next door to the MacIntyres’ pool. No one was home, but Ginnie had an open invitation to use the pool any time, which she did, as often as possible. Swimming gave her a new body, a perfect body. She loved the touch of water, that first shiver of promise, then slipping into the cool cloud that stretches her limbs, seduces them, softens the hard edges, smudges the furious muscles, rocking and stroking as she sinks into its yielding swell. She dives deeply and pulls herself along, smoothly moving, lightly and easily. And now she rises, breaking the water’s surface, water trickling over her face, down her neck, across her shoulders, water running over her body, touching more gently than skin on skin. And after catching her breath, she swims again to pass away the hours.

‘I’m desperate for a good cleanout,’ Kate said to Vivienne as they walked along the beach. ‘I’ve decided to try a new beetroot diet when I get home.’

‘Just beetroot?’

‘Carrot as well. And plenty of fluids.’

‘Including whisky?’ Vivienne was smiling.

‘Vivienne! Do you suggest I lack self-discipline?’

‘Never!’

They were two women in their early forties walking along an ocean beach. Despite the heat the beach was almost deserted – only a man fishing, an elderly couple with their dogs, a youth surfing. It was one of those days when the sky is so bright that it fades the sea to a purplish-silver sheet; towards the shore the sheet buckles into glassy columns that swell and finally burst in the shallows; a smooth day with the regular breaking of waves to fix it in time.

‘If only we could stay another week.’

‘And work?’ Vivienne asked. ‘What about work – my book, your dissertation?’

‘Vivienne, my dear, how often must I remind you there’s more to life than work.’

‘Ah yes, but it’s neither as enjoyable nor as civilised.’

It was Kate’s turn to smile, and yet she was aware of a familiar disquiet nibbling the edge of her pleasure. Vivienne never stopped working, not even on her rare holidays. Simply by being herself, Vivienne threw into relief that lassitude which clung to Kate and which Kate successfully concealed with everyone else. It was only Vivienne with her swathes of insight, her four books, her tenured position and her indefatigable passage through life who reminded Kate that she was more than a little sluggish.

Which was not to suggest that Kate did not love her, because she did and would always. Indeed, a life without Vivienne was inconceivable. She had always been there. She had saved Kate from the claustrophobia of boarding-school and a loveless childhood. Later, she had organised the bungalow at Elizabeth’s and helped secure Kate’s first teaching job. And in the pain of Walter’s accident only Vivienne had been able to blot the grief.

‘Do you remember?’ Kate asked. ‘Up there.’ She was looking at the cliff.

Of course Vivienne remembered; she had been watching the rocks ever since they rounded the point. More than that, she had thought of the cliff every time she and Kate had chosen the other direction for their daily walk.

‘He was always fascinated by flight. Birds, insects, aeroplanes, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could fly.’ Kate stared at the cliff while she talked. ‘I like to think he knew joy as he fell. He missed the rocks, a clean death.’

Vivienne would never forget. It was she who had found the little body, Walter’s perfect child’s body, pale from the water but without a scratch, no sign of struggle. Most of all she could not forget the limpness: the water had sucked his strength.

It had been ten years ago, a day much like this, warm, blue, and the beach practically to themselves: Lydia Branch and her twins,
Kate, Walter and Vivienne. Lydia had decided to join them at the last minute – and why not? it was her house after all – she needed the break, she said, tapering the sentence into murmurings of nerves and stress. But since their arrival she had, if anything, become more agitated, slipping into her bedroom on numerous occasions for telephone calls which merely fuelled her distress. Once when the telephone rang she grabbed the receiver from Kate before Kate had said a word, and another time when Vivienne answered and the caller hung up, Lydia immediately disappeared into the bedroom to make a private call. From then on Vivienne and Kate had not bothered with the phone.

Finally Lydia confessed: she was having an affair, and if she appeared to be stressed it was because she suspected her lover was seeing someone else.

‘He’s not married then?’ Kate asked, knowing full well he was.

‘Of course he is, what normal man over the age of thirty isn’t? I think he’s seeing someone other than me.’

Kate and Vivienne and practically everyone else had known about Lydia Branch and Adrian Dadswell for years. Lydia, however, believed her secret was safe and so, as she talked to Kate and Vivienne, she was careful to strip her story of names and places. She was so miserable, she said, loved him so much despite the pain he caused her. It was not the first time he had been unfaithful and yet what could she do? Life without him would be a tawdry affair. The others smiled at her choice of words but Lydia, unaware, talked on. The twins were playing in the sand, the same twins who had been brought into the world to inject life into the Branch marriage but who had, instead, cemented it with obligation, and Walter was sitting close by. He liked to watch the waves and would sit and stare at them for hours.

So, Walter was staring, Lydia was crying, Vivienne and Kate were listening, and then Walter was gone.

Lydia stayed on the beach with the twins while Kate went to search the dunes; Vivienne made her way to the cliff. She remembered running, not fast, and yet her chest hurt and her breath whined. As she approached the cliff she scanned its ledges and crannies, but Walter was nowhere to be seen. It was the colour
that made her look to the sea, the red shirt billowing in the waves, his little body riding towards the rocks. She ran so hard, across the sand into the water, and then she was swimming, arms thrashing the foam, reaching him before he hit the rocks. Beautiful child, eyes closed, body so limp. Vivienne had never wanted to see a dead person.

She brought him in, the little wet body against her own. His lifeless limbs dangled freely and she tried to fold them in her arms. By the time she reached the shore Kate was there, silently waiting, her grief a thin taut wire you dared not touch. She wanted to be alone with her son. Vivienne hesitated, but Kate insisted she leave. As Vivienne walked away she heard Kate say there could be no worse death than drowning.

‘I will have to grieve for his terror as well as my loss,’ she said.

Vivienne took the path up the cliff, glancing back every few seconds to Kate and the dead child knotted together on the sand. She climbed to the summit where she found Walter’s sandals and sunhat weighted down with stones: he had always been careful like that.

Vivienne brought the clothes to Kate.

‘They were up there.’

Kate gazed up at the cliff and then to the water. She smiled and kissed the child in her arms. ‘He always wanted to fly,’ she said quietly. ‘He must have thought he could.’

Now, on the same beach, the cliff ahead, Kate turned to Vivienne. ‘It was a good death,’ she said. ‘Walter had his moment of joy.’

Vivienne put an arm around her friend and the two women turned away from the cliff and walked back towards the house.

‘Do you see much of Lydia these days?’ Vivienne asked.

‘Every few months I suppose. To be honest, even though she used to visit quite often, we shared little in common; she was really Elizabeth’s friend.’

‘I guess that’s what made the affair with Adrian so untenable. Your best friend’s husband – it was a bit much!’

‘And still is.’

Vivienne stopped. ‘You’re not saying that Lydia and Adrian are
still together?’ Kate nodded. ‘After all these years?’ Kate nodded again. ‘And David? The affair must be twenty years old, what does David think?’

‘I guess he’s used to it by now.’

‘You astound me. I thought they finished years ago, not long after that dreadful day at the races.’

Kate shook her head and turned away. Unlike Vivienne, Kate knew that it could be easier to allow a relationship to persist rather than suffer the effort of extrication, but she would never have said this to Vivienne who would have reduced it to a tidy pile of moral inconsistencies.

‘I can’t imagine there’d be much joy in it for Lydia,’ Vivienne said. ‘Adrian’s never been a considerate man, and as for constancy, he’d see that as working against his own better interests.’

Lydia Branch had been trying to contact Adrian since eight o’clock that morning; it was now after two, and still he wasn’t available. Lunch, his secretary said, Mr Dadswell was still at lunch. With his project manager. Yes, she had given Adrian her messages, but Mrs Branch must understand that with the opening of Eden Park only a week away he was run off his feet. Lydia resented the woman’s patronising tone – as if she needed to be reminded how busy Adrian was.

She hung up without bothering to leave another message. Adrian’s lack of consideration – she refused to think of it as neglect – invariably resulted in Lydia’s feeling compromised with people who simply should not matter. Run off his feet indeed! If only Lydia could be sure that was all he was doing with his project manager. Doreen would know, Doreen was one of those secretaries who knew everything, but Doreen would never betray Adrian. She was utterly devoted to him, and as she would never be one of his discarded lovers, being happily widowed and a good twenty years older than he, she would remain devoted. Lydia had never liked her, not from that very first day about fifteen years ago when Lydia, lachrymose and blotchy, had stormed out of Adrian’s office and banged into the new secretary returning from lunch. Doreen saw too much, she was that type.

The grandfather clock in the hall struck half past two; Lydia winced, the twins would be home in just over an hour and she knew she couldn’t be bothered with them. She went into her dressing room and tidied her makeup and hair, changed her shoes, freshened her perfume, collected keys and bag and went downstairs. Joyce was in the kitchen doing the silver; as Lydia passed she called out she wouldn’t be long and that the children were to have the Boston bun for afternoon tea. Joyce, who was of the same school as Doreen and knew too much, did not even raise her head. Adrian’s fault again for placing her in such an invidious position, Adrian, who at the same time as he gilded her life with pleasure made her feel worn out, secondhand.

Lydia left the house by the front door and stood for a moment beneath the porte-cochère. She was more angry than upset, although the outcome – a pounding head and a stomach clogged with wire – was much the same. She stood and collected herself, the great white house behind her, the dark blue Corniche in front.

Lydia’s appearance was just right – for the mansion, the Corniche, the Astro-Turf tennis court, the pool and the lush, terraced garden. Exactly right. She was considered an attractive woman who was ageing well, indeed, at forty-four she looked better than ever, probably because she was slimmer than ever – and more miserable, but no one need know about that. Her clothes were always
à la mode
without being faddish and, being quite tall, Lydia was always elegant. Today she wore cream silk trousers with an apricot print blouse which was drawn in at the waist by a wide belt. Her hair rested on her shoulders, straight and blonde with paler highlights and a wispy fringe; now she flicked her head enjoying the caress of hair on bare skin. Good skin, fine-grained and smooth, with a light tan to set off the hair and the blue eyes. The nose and mouth were her best features: both perfectly symmetrical, clearly engraved curves of exactly the correct size. Lydia’s was the face in the women’s magazines and she was proud of it.

She opened the car door and got in quickly, feeling, as always, a little exposed. David insisted the Rolls be parked in front; he said it set off the house nicely. In truth, he was proud of the car
and wanted it seen. This was, Lydia knew, one of the last vestiges of David’s very ordinary middle-class background, and although correct form would conceal the Rolls in the garage she let David have this one small vanity. As she guided the car around the drive to the street desperate to be away from the house and telephone, she wondered where she would go. She wanted to pass some gentle time, a couple of hours with Adrian out of her mind. She was exhausted with wanting him and ransacked by grievances, yet a life without him would be a barren and brittle affair. Besides, she could not give him up, no one could.

Except Elizabeth. Often in recent months Lydia had thought of her old friend, and now, as she found herself driving in the direction of the Dadswell home, she knew that if she could choose a confidante – and with the current state of play, she desperately needed one – it would be Elizabeth. Years ago, Lydia had talked to Kate and Vivienne, but Kate was a flighty listener and Vivienne so proper, and besides, in the past few years both had become such close friends of Elizabeth that to talk to either was now out of the question. Elizabeth had always been an uncanny listener, unfurling the mess of problems even as you spoke, so, by the time you were finished she was able to present the situation clearly: she would have ordered the mess, settled your nerves and removed the sense of impending doom that had started you talking in the first place.