Heat Wave (15 page)

Back then in the cathedral town she was an expert on child time. She knew with precision just how many hours could be consumed by an excursion to the park, by the shopping, by sleep, by a visit to a friend. Now she wants to explain to Teresa that it is all an illusion, that in fact the months are racing by and Luke with them, an irretrievable succession of Lukes, but she knows that this would make
no sense to Teresa, who is in the thick of it. She inhabited then a different time zone from Harry. Her days were long, and one day mirrored another. Harry’s days – well, Harry’s days were a helter-skelter progress of seminars and meetings and sudden dashes up to London for a broadcast and unexplained sorties in all directions because there was a conference he must sample or someone he must talk to about an article or a grant or a job opportunity. The notion that academic life is an orderly and contemplative affair is quite misguided, Pauline came to realize. Harry bounded about the place and occasionally withdrew to his study for a few hours of feverish work, during which he must not be disturbed. The turbulence of his own existence was reflected by the life on the university campus, which seemed to be in a condition of permanent uproar. The students were always demonstrating or protesting, either about the state of the world or about what they perceived as their own unjust treatment at the hands of the authorities. Harry and his colleagues were forever locked into excited negotiations which would spill over into the house as the phone rang late at night or little posses of stern-faced students arrived to deliver ultimatums.

Pauline took a keen interest in all this, but realized that she was irrelevant. The students did not even see her, immersed in their own entrancing world of outrage. Harry saw her, daily, but recognized the house and its occupants simply as the reliable anchorage to which he returned when it was convenient in search of sustenance and recuperation. He would breeze in, exuberant or uncommunicative according to his state of mind, knowing nothing of her protracted days with their many hours in which to consider his alternative existence.

Pauline and Teresa patrol the pond in the park, feeding the ducks.

‘Daddy?’ says Teresa with animation, staring across the pond.

‘No,’ says Pauline, ‘that’s someone else’s daddy.’

Your daddy is at Broadcasting House right now, which is a large building somewhere off Oxford Street, I’m told. Or on the other hand he may not be. He may be whooping it up in a pub with some of these intimate associates I do not know or he may be bent
studiously over a book in the library of the British Museum or he may be in bed with this person Clare something who has rung up on several occasions lately and prefers not to leave a message. I do not rightly know where your daddy is. I note that most of your friends’ mothers do know where their husbands are, pretty well, which is beginning to give me pause for thought, though your daddy becomes petulant and aggrieved when I murmur words to this effect. Your daddy points out that he is a brilliant and thrusting young man – he puts it slightly differently but that is what he means – much in demand, and that he cannot be expected to account for his every move. Your daddy implies that my concern is suffocating and proprietorial. When I am stung into making reference to an episode we will not go into here he looks wearily reproachful and says he thought that was dead and buried now. I am made to feel errant and unreasonable which is quite an achievement on his part because it is clear enough to me that the boot is on the other foot. So I end up confused, not knowing quite where I am – along with not knowing at all where he is. I begin to wonder if perhaps it is all in my mind, if perhaps I am indeed becoming slightly paranoid – that is a word which has been used when your daddy is feeling particularly self-righteous. So I do not press the point, and your daddy usually ends up making love to me because he knows full well that will shut me up.

I love your daddy, unfortunately. None of this would arise if I didn’t, I presume. What I am feeling these days is one of the appalling side-effects of love. At least I suppose love is the right word. This too gives me pause for thought because what I feel for you is also generally known as love but it is profoundly different from what I feel for your daddy. I would kill anyone who laid a hand on you but where your daddy is concerned there are circumstances under which I suspect that I might kill him. I am obsessed with your daddy. I think about him most of the time. But I am quite clear-eyed about him. I see that he is egotistic and self-regarding and entrepreneurial. When I consider your daddy with detachment I do not entirely like him. I think he is clever and stimulating but I do not altogether admire him. I love him, which is different. Good sense and indeed self-interest seem to be set aside. And yet I am an intelligent woman, or
at least I believed I was. I cannot contemplate the thought of life without your daddy. I cannot contemplate the thought of him being with anyone but me. And this means that your daddy always has the upper hand. He can defuse me with a word or a look.

Take last weekend. We were going to drive to the coast and have a picnic up on the downs. You are partial to picnics. So am I, come to that. We were looking forward to this outing, both of us. And then on Friday evening, late, long after you were in bed, your daddy recalled suddenly that he had not remembered to mention that he was going to have to go to London because there was this symposium at UCL which he really could not afford to miss. I protested. I dare say there was an extra edge to my protestations because last week there had been one of those phone calls from this person Clare something who is so oddly averse to leaving messages. Perhaps your daddy was aware of this edge because he was unusually contrite, unusually anxious to propitiate. He got us both a drink and talked about this plan he has to take a house in France for the summer and he looked at me with that look that unsteadies me entirely. He looked and I was unsteadied and then we went to bed, but not to sleep. So it goes.

Teresa has lifted Luke down from the fence and they are now coming back along the track, very slowly, at Luke’s pace, with many stops and starts as Luke pauses to examine a leaf or a blade of grass, falls over, sits down for a while. Teresa waits for him, patiently in attendance. She looks towards the cottages and becomes suddenly alert. A door bangs. Maurice has appeared and strolls towards them, a cup of coffee in his hand. Taking a breather, it would seem. Pauline watches for a moment and then reaches abruptly to switch on her computer. She starts to sort through a pile of correspondence.

Pauline lies in bed. The bed is striped with thin brilliant bars of sunlight. It is early morning, and the shutters are closed, but the light still pours through. Teresa is asleep. Harry has risen early to work. His typewriter pecks away in the next room – peck, peck, peck, then ping and shunt, then peck, peck, peck again. That is the only sound –
that and the endless rasp of insects outside. It is very quiet here in the house in France, which is turning out to be as she had expected in some ways but not in others.

She had not understood about Mrs Gatz. Harry has not exactly taken this house – rented it, paid cash for it. He has been lent it by Mrs Gatz. Mrs Gatz is rich. She is a patron. She patronizes those who are up and coming – academics, writers, artists. Harry met her in the States, apparently, and is now included in her constituency of patronage. Mrs Gatz herself occupies a much bigger house nearby – a sort of small château indeed – and some of the patronized are installed there with her. Harry and Pauline have been allocated this house, on account of Teresa, no doubt (it is apparent that Mrs Gatz is not all that enthusiastic about children). Thus they have a degree of privacy and distance from the fervent life of the château, but Harry is expected to appear there with regularity, to join the late-morning gatherings round the swimming pool and the long evening drinking sessions on the terrace. And Pauline also, by extension. Those patronized have certain obligations. Mrs Gatz has thoughtfully fixed up a girl from the village who will come in to baby-sit, but the girl is fifteen, bovine by disposition and patently of low intelligence. Teresa hates her and Pauline is uneasy about her, so she does not accompany Harry very much in the evenings. She sits here in the house and drinks some of the
vin du pays
provided and thinks about the ways in which this summer in France is not turning out quite how she had hoped.

It is not exactly the family holiday Harry had seemed to be proposing. It is not the rare opportunity for them to spend time together, freed from the demands of the university and Harry’s relentless diary. It is indeed the occasion for Harry to get down to some work, and that of course is the purpose of Mrs Gatz’s generous patronage. She is a facilitator. She is in the business of facilitating production by the young and promising. They are to write and think and paint and sit around brilliantly exchanging ideas and thereby entertaining Mrs Gatz, who is easily bored.

So Harry gets up early and pecks away vigorously at the typewriter. The pile of typescript rises, and with it Harry’s spirits. Harry
is having a good time. He loves the place, he enjoys the vivacious company up at the château, he is amused by Mrs Gatz. ‘This is the life …’ he says to Pauline, as he wanders barefoot on the cool tiled floors of the sun-dazed house. ‘I want to stay here for ever, don’t you?’ says he, reaching for her across the bed when he has tumbled in at midnight after one of those starlit evenings on the flower-hung terrace of the château.

No, Pauline would not like to stay here for ever, but it seems churlish to put a damper on Harry’s exuberance. Harry is gregarious and convivial. Also, as he frequently points out, becoming at these moments serious and less exuberant, he is getting so much out of this – rubbing his ideas up against those of others, trading interests and opinions. There is the Harvard economist with whom he spars so productively and the quirky woman novelist and the brilliant twenty-five-year-old Indian philosopher. The recipients of Mrs Gatz’s patronage are various and the population of the château is a shifting one. Each week there is an injection of fresh blood, while other members of the party vanish without further ado. Harry always seems to be on familiar terms with everyone, but Pauline is often at a loss, on her infrequent visits, when she is confronted with a new array of glittering performers, some of whom she eyes with misgiving.

It would of course be absurd to have such misgivings about Mrs Gatz, who is fifty plus and therefore exempt, though admittedly striking still with her coiled platinum hair, her pneumatic sun-tanned body packed into a white satin bathing costume or draped in Italian silks, and her freight of gold chains and bangles. Harry is now one of those who call Mrs Gatz Irene. He is summoned to her side, and they walk around the garden together, or sit apart by the pool, Harry leaning towards her in intimate eloquent discourse and Mrs Gatz occasionally throwing her head back to laugh uproariously.

Harry thinks Mrs Gatz is a hoot, a character – so he tells Pauline. Incredible woman, he says, grinning at some private reminiscence.

What Mrs Gatz thinks of Harry is more opaque. It is on this that Pauline reflects as she lies in bed in the early morning, hearing the insects and Harry’s pecking typewriter. ‘We don’t see enough of
you, my dear,’ said Mrs Gatz yesterday, pausing on a tour of the poolside. ‘But of course you have the little girl to cope with.’ Her glance strays to Harry, who is sunbathing on a lilo, talking to the recently arrived Mexican sculptress, whose sleek black head bobs out of the water alongside. ‘Anyway, Harry has been the life and soul of the party.’ She looks again at Pauline, thoughtfully. Mrs Gatz has small black shiny eyes; the effect is that of being inspected by a bird – an impersonal scrutiny, perhaps with a view to action of some kind. ‘He’s quite something, your husband, isn’t he? I dare say he leads you a dance.’ She pauses, seems about to continue, and then does not. She takes a cigarette from the pocket of her towelling robe, lights it, inhales deeply. ‘Well, good luck, my dear,’ she says, and moves on.

It is of this that Pauline thinks, lying under the stripes of morning sunshine. She thinks about the attractive process of strangling Mrs Gatz, of drowning her in the turquoise swimming pool. In due course, in the fullness of time, she will think about Harry.

‘Hi!’ calls Teresa. ‘Come and talk to us. We’re bored.’ She is in the garden with Luke. Pauline has waved from her bathroom window. Luke stares up and beams.

Pauline joins them on the grass. This is supposed to be a lawn but it is a perfunctory one because too infrequently mown. The flower borders are similarly shaggy, stands of magenta phlox elbowed by clumps of evening primrose and lupins, all of them interwoven with goosegrass and bindweed. Over the years Pauline has attempted to curb and control the garden and has been both exasperated and awed by its tenacity. Green stuff pours from the ground in a seasonal flood, indiscriminate and unstoppable, and then declines into a sulky winter detritus of brown stems and blackened leaf mould. And Pauline recognizes that her inability to make much of a mark upon this identifies her occupancy of World’s End for the dilettante affair that it is. None of the previous residents would have allowed this disorder. They were in the business of obstructing the forces of nature.

So Pauline and Teresa sprawl on the grass while Luke makes
forays into the fringes of rampant growth. Teresa has been idly plaiting withered iris leaves. She has made Luke a sort of hat, which he is now gleefully destroying.

‘I don’t suppose you remember a place in France with a swimming pool,’ says Pauline.

‘No. When?’

‘You were two.’

‘I remember a place somewhere with a black dog that I was frightened of,’ Teresa offers.

‘That was later. Much later. Bristol.’

They look at one another, speculatively, each of them considering a shuffled pack of images, some of which are shared, but with skewed and incommunicable vision.

‘The turquoise swimming pool was in Lot-et-Garonne,’ says Pauline. ‘You were more impressed with it than I was. It sprang to mind, for some reason. The weather, I dare say. We should get Luke one of these plastic paddling pools.’