Heat Wave (20 page)

Pauline stares out at the wheat, at the rolling flank of the hill, at the crest of trees against the skyline. She thinks of her colleague without affection. And then of Maurice. And finally of Teresa. She thinks of another Teresa, a vanished Teresa, who is hunched in despair on the window-seat of the new house.

‘Listen,’ she says to Teresa, ‘it’ll be all right. In time. You see. Just give it a bit longer.’

Teresa’s eyes gleam with tears. The sun falls through the window on to her pale face with those eyes of shining anguish. ‘They don’t like me,’ she says. ‘Diana said I could go about with her and today she won’t talk to me even. She just walks off. I’m the only person without a friend.’ She is eight, and life has bared its fangs.

‘It’s because you’re new,’ says Pauline firmly. ‘Look, you’ve only been at the school half a term. Give it time.’

‘I hate this place,’ weeps Teresa. ‘I hate the school and the place and I hate this house. It’s never going to be all right.’

‘It will, it will,’ says Pauline. She wants to tell Teresa that this is nothing, on the scale of things – but of course it is, it is. Right now, for Teresa, there is no worse, she is pitched into an abyss. And Pauline aches for her, helpless.

Harry walks into the room. He notices Teresa. ‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’ He turns to Pauline. ‘Don’t wait supper for me – I
probably won’t get back till later. D’you know where my leather jacket is? It seems to have walked.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ says Pauline. ‘I dare say you left it in the university.’

‘Well, I hope so.’ Harry notices Teresa again. ‘What’s up with her?’

‘She’s unhappy,’ says Pauline. ‘Things aren’t going well at school.’

Harry puts an arm round Teresa and tickles her ear. ‘Cheer up, poppet. Life’s a dream. “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Remember?’ He used to sing this to an infant Teresa, time was.

‘Would that it were,’ says Pauline.

Teresa wriggles away. ‘I’m not a baby, am I?’ She glares at him.

‘Oh, dear … ’ Harry pulls a chastened face at Pauline, who looks away. ‘Well … I must dash. Bye now – see you.’

Harry goes. It is as though a distracting gust of wind has blown through the room. Everything is still and quiet once more. Teresa heaves with an involuntary dry sob.

‘Tell you what,’ says Pauline. ‘You can stay up and watch telly, and we’ll have supper on a tray.’

Teresa heaves again. ‘OK.’ She wipes her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Could we have beefburgers and chips?’

‘It’s me, I’m afraid,’ says Chris Rogers. ‘Is this a nuisance? Just say so and I’ll bugger off.’

‘Not at all.’ Pauline turns down the radio and takes the phone to the sofa.

‘The kids are asleep and this is the only time I have to myself.’

‘She’s not back yet, then?’

‘No.’

‘Are you … talking?’ Pauline inquires delicately.

‘We’re in negotiation, as you might say. I’m getting a bit frantic, I can tell you. That’s why I rang, really. Sorry to make you a sort of agony aunt.’

‘Feel free,’ says Pauline. ‘I’ve always seen editorial work as a flexible brief. Is she still with her mother?’

‘Yes. Frankly, if you ask me I think her mother’s been sticking her oar in.’

‘Her mother,’ says Pauline sternly, ‘has her child’s interests at heart, no doubt. You can hardly blame her for that. She’s concerned. Do they want to get you down off that mountain, is that it?’

‘Well, that … yes. And other things that are less negotiable. Actually I’m getting fairly pissed off with the mountain myself. I’m talking to a guy I know in Swansea who may be able to find us somewhere cheap enough there. Can I ask you something?’

‘Within reason.’

‘Is my book crap?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’ says Chris Rogers anxiously.

‘Listen,’ says Pauline, ‘you paid it the compliment of writing it. Now stand by it.’

‘Yes,’ says Chris humbly.

‘And it’s not crap. It’s original and provocative.’

‘It’s just that I’ve been wondering if I’m in the wrong trade.’

‘Ah, well, that’s as may be,’ says Pauline. ‘You’ve not exactly picked an easy ride. But that’s another matter. The book is a thing apart. They tend to have a life of their own.’

‘Ah, all that stuff …’ says Chris. ‘I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.’

‘I’m not talking higher criticism,’ says Pauline. ‘I’m talking self-evident truths. Leave the book to its own devices. It’s you we have to think about now. When did you last … negotiate?’

‘At lunchtime. D’you think I should call her again this evening?’

‘I should go right ahead and do just that.’

There is a day of such sledgehammer heat that no one ventures outside. And something curious happens to the wheat. It seems to hiss. Pauline keeps all her windows open, and through them comes this sound, as of some furtively restless surrounding sea.

‘Hi!’ says Maurice.

He steps into the garden, a glass of white wine in his hand. It is early evening. Teresa is putting Luke to bed. Pauline is reading on the seat at the end of the lawn. Maurice waves his glass at her, querying.

‘No, thanks.’

He stands there, taking a gulp of wine, eyeing her over the top of the glass. He does not join her on the seat.

Pauline marks the page with a leaf and closes her book. She looks at Maurice, at that familiar triangular face, the slightly beaky nose, the springy hair. Once this was the face of a stranger to whom she casually talked at a party. That unexceptional exchange flicks into her mind and she experiences it again, but loaded now, everything that it holds streaming away from it – Teresa, Luke, this moment here at World’s End. My doing, she thinks, all my doing. My fault. I should have stayed home with a headache that evening.

‘Too hot today,’ says Maurice.

Pauline agrees.

‘Is it true that computers can go haywire above a certain temperature?’

Pauline says that she has not heard that this is the case.

Maurice talks about his work. He is going over Chapter Eight at the moment. Chapter Eight is concerned with the use of nostalgic imagery in advertising. Maurice has assembled an impressive range of examples. He stands there talking about petrol ads and the concept of remote and depopulated landscape, about whisky and the cult of gracious living. This is quite interesting, as it goes. Pauline listens with half an ear. And Maurice talks with an eye upon her. Both are aware of a sub-text, something new and disturbing that lurks below the surface of what Maurice is saying and to which Pauline is apparently listening. It is as though they are watching one another across a great distance – mistrustful and wary. Both are waiting to see which way the cat will jump. What are you doing? Pauline thinks. What have you done? And she sees that Maurice is thinking also: what do you know? What will you do?

From the open window of the cottage drifts the sound of Teresa talking to Luke, of Luke’s wordless responses.

Pauline looks up from her breakfast coffee at the sound of a car engine. Maurice’s car. She watches as it reverses out on to the track and heads for the road. It is eight-fifteen.

At nine-thirty the postman leaves the mail in the box at the gate. Teresa does not come out so Pauline takes the letters to the garden, where Luke is falling in and out of the plastic paddling pool.

‘All for Maurice, in fact,’ says Pauline, of the letters.

‘Maurice is in London till Friday.’ Teresa says this in a tone of absolute neutrality. Strenuous and painful neutrality.

‘Oh, I see. I hadn’t realized he was going.’

‘I thought I’d said.’ Teresa is offhand now, dismissive. It is a struggle, the achievement of this air of detachment. She is clenched with tension, Pauline sees.

‘Maybe you did. Anyway …’ Pauline puts the letters down on the bench.

‘Thanks.’

‘If you want my car for anything, take it. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Oh, right, thanks. I might go up to the village later.’

‘Well, then … Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

Teresa stares at her.

‘If you want to get rid of Luke for a bit.’

‘Oh, right,’ says Teresa.

Pauline goes. Teresa is unreachable, she realizes. Teresa is cut off beyond the fog of her own obsession. Nothing else matters.

Pauline faces Harry across a darkening room. She stands as far from him as she can get because if she came close she might not be able to say what she is about to say. The room is dark because she has sat waiting for this moment as the evening fell and has been too intent to switch on the light. And now here at last is Harry, with his coat still over his arm because he is brought up short by what she has said, by what she is saying, and has neglected to put it down.

‘I don’t trust you,’ says Pauline. ‘I don’t trust you and never shall, and I cannot go on living in a state of permanent doubt. I love you, and wish to God that I didn’t.’

It is late July, and the place has now ripened. Tall buff grasses wave along the roadsides, the hogweed heads have turned from cream to brown. And the fields of winter wheat are straw-coloured. The landscape is a patchwork of fawn and green carved up by the dark lattice of hedges. The trees are dusky brooding shapes. The hay is down, the former hayfields are dotted with shiny black plastic drums. The summer has peaked, the year is tipping over. What became of spring? How can all this have come about in a few impetuous weeks? All this has happened under her nose, Pauline sees, and yet only now is she aware of the extremity of change. This landscape is unstable. It rushes unstoppably ahead, locked into its impervious cycle.

Maurice is back. She heard his car late in the evening, but did not look out. This morning she saw him from the window – in the garden, briefly attending Luke. Holding Luke’s hand as the two of them tour the lawn, throwing a ball for Luke – the father. And then Teresa comes out and Pauline turns away. She is not a voyeur. What is between them is no concern of hers. Except of course that it is.

They will be here again this weekend, it seems, those others. Carol and James. Teresa has earlier released this information with the desperate neutrality that is becoming habitual. Maurice needs James to go through Chapters Nine and Ten with him. No, they couldn’t do this while Maurice was in London because Maurice was too busy checking references and seeing people. And no, Maurice can’t just send James a copy because they need to go over it together.

Don’t ask, Teresa’s eyes say. Eyes that are blank, giving nothing away. Don’t ask questions. There’s nothing wrong. And there isn’t anything you could do if there were.

Pauline picks up the phone and puts it down again, several times within the hour. Shall I? Shall I not?

She has turned aside, in the past. She has ignored the hints, the veiled suggestions. She has told herself that all this is chitchat, gossip, that it is unfair to Maurice to pay attention to this sort of stuff. So what if he had a few girlfriends? she has thought. Par for the course – Maurice is forty-four, one would not expect otherwise.

The old acquaintance answers at once. ‘Yes? Pauline! Good to hear you!’ The old acquaintance of whom Pauline is not all that fond and who has known Maurice for many a long year, longer than Pauline, better than Pauline.

Pauline has her alibi, her pretext for calling like this, out of the blue. A complex professional inquiry which the acquaintance is only too happy to discuss at length until eventually the matter is exhausted and the conversation turns to more personal matters, as Pauline knew it would, and especially to such matters as they have in common.

‘And how is Maurice?’ says the acquaintance. ‘Dear me – I still can’t get used to thinking of Maurice as a married man.’ There is a note in her voice – a faintly lubricious note which Pauline has anticipated and which she detests. Well, she has asked for this.

Maurice is fine, she replies. Busy on his book. Busy – period. She allows the faintest note of distaste to creep into her voice. She allows an inviting silence. Into which the acquaintance leaps. She talks about Maurice. She tells Maurice anecdotes, which are purportedly entertaining but most of which are to a greater or lesser extent to Maurice’s discredit. They illustrate Maurice’s preoccupation with his own concerns, Maurice’s unswerving egotism. And as the woman talks Pauline recognizes the distant grinding of an axe. There is an edge to this. Once, time was, this woman had been close enough to Maurice for such things to matter. Pauline flinches. You asked for this, she tells herself again.

Oh yes, says the acquaintance, that’s Maurice all right. Typical Maurice. But he can charm the birds off the trees, of course. Always good company, is Maurice. And maybe he’s different these days, maybe marriage … The acquaintance here allows an inviting pause, which Pauline fills with some non-committal sound, and the other is
soon in full flow once more. He may well have changed his spots, she says – probably all he needed was the love of a good woman. She laughs. But I have to say that when I knew him well, where women were concerned Maurice was one of those for whom the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Know what I mean?

Pauline murmurs that she knows what is meant. And I’ve had enough of this, she thinks. She edges back into the conversation, starts to swing it round, to wind it up. A few minutes later she is alone once more. Disliking that confiding voice. Disliking herself.

Pauline withdraws, in so far as withdrawal is possible within the parameters of World’s End. She avoids Maurice. This is not difficult, since the only common territory is the garden, and she can see if he is out there and time her own sorties accordingly. And Maurice would seem to be doing the same, since he does not appear when she sits on the seat in the early evening, or when she has joined Teresa and Luke for a while.

Teresa is trying to behave as though unconcerned. She has sensed Pauline’s disquiet, and so struggles to camouflage her own unrest. She pays determined attention to Luke, and when Pauline is around she makes brittle attempts at conversation, inconsequential stuff about the weather, the plants in the garden, Luke’s doings. This valour distresses Pauline so much that she can hardly bear to be with Teresa.