Other People (27 page)

Prince got up at seven every morning without fail. Amy got up then too, partly for his company and partly for her share of the delicious breakfasts he made. Prince was always pleasantly irascible in the mornings; his vague anger was a rhetorical style directed outwards at the world. With calm relish he read out extracts from the newspaper that the boy brought—accounts of greed, spite and folly—and commented on them in that complicitous way he had of making the good seem bad and the bad seem good. Then he drove offjust as it was getting light, to join the queue for London. Amy did the washing-up and readied herself to deal with the day.

In the evenings they sat and read and listened to music. Amy did most of the reading and Prince did most of the listening. Prince listened to music with his green eyes closed, the formidable, gourdlike face thickened out towards the jaws. Sometimes they watched television together. 'Let's watch television for a while,' he would say. He never wanted to watch anything in particular. 'When I want to watch television,' he said, 'I just want to watch television.' Occasionally they watched Michael Shane, who was still out there, still out on the burning zones, in jeeps, helicopters, canoes, in sweltering prison-yards, adobe huts, bullet-sizzled bunkers—in all the places where the world was on fire.

One night Amy hesitated and said, 'He's an old flame of mine, you know.'

'Mm, I know,' said Prince coolly. 'Hard to believe, isn't it. That little wimp?' He turned to her and nodded several times in amused appraisal. 'Boy, I bet old Amy made short work of him. I bet she didn't waste much time feeding his ... feeding him through the wringer.'

Amy laughed shamefacedly and said, 'He told me that after Amy he thought he was going queer— that's what he said.'

'Actually he was right. He did go queer and never went—Whoops,' said Prince as his glass nearly skidded from his hand. 'I nearly spilt it,' he said.

'What were you going to say?'

He shook his head. 'Nothing. Talking of old flames, your Mr Wrong seems to be keeping a low profile these days,' he said, returning his gaze to the screen.

'Really?' said Amy.

'Perhaps he's gone straight.'

'Not before time.'

He turned to her with his knowing smile, the smile that knew things.

'I'm not afraid,' she said. 'I think I'd know what to do this time round.'

'Good for you, Amy,' he said.

That night she went to bed a little too early. As she got undressed and looked out of the window she heard from downstairs the deceptively brash opening of a piano concerto which she had grown particularly attached to over the past weeks. Hurriedly she put on her nightdress. She felt sure that Prince wouldn't mind if she came and listened with him for a while. The music settled as she walked barefoot down the padded staircase and opened the door. She saw Prince before he saw her. He stood in front of the window, his head erect, his arms tensed and raised, conducting the night air.

He turned suddenly, almost losing his balance. For a moment he seemed without bearings, unformidable, his hands still stretched out in supplication, or helplessness.

'I'm sorry,' said Amy.

'No that's all right,' he said, steadying himself. He smiled foolishly and held her eye. He's in awe of me too, she realized suddenly. She walked into the room and sat on the sofa with her legs tucked up. He stood before the fire. She closed her eyes and he closed his, head solemnly bowed, and they listened to the music together.

Later Amy got up from her knees and climbed into bed. Through the window she could see the moon, perched alone on the very tip of the night. The silvered tinge against the navy-blue sky contained tiny particles of rose among its inaudible storms of light. If tenderness had a colour, then that was the colour of tenderness. With her cheek on the pillow, Amy's thoughts began to loosen. She felt a gentle impatience for each successive moment, not the tearing eagerness but the half-anxious certainty of a mother at the school gates, waiting for her child to emerge from the crowd. She felt that Prince was watching her. She felt what it was like to be young. She felt that the moon and her own prayers and thoughts were living things that shared her room and carefully presided over the contours of her sleep. She wasn't sure whether this was love. She thought that everyone's heart must hurt slightly when they began to feel all right about themselves.

23

• • •

Last Things

'I'm going away for a while,' he said to her at breakfast the next day.

Amy wasn't alarmed or even surprised. In a way she was pleased. She knew that this was a salute to something in her, and that she wouldn't disappoint him.

'You'll be all right, won't you?'

'Of course I'll be all right,' she said.

They finished breakfast in silence. She walked out with him to the car.

'Something will happen while I'm gone,' he said. 'Something pleasant.'

'What kind of thing?'

'You wait. Something nice. And don't worry about Mr Wrong. I'll be keeping an eye on him.'

'A green eye,' she said.

She gave him her hand. He raised it to his lips, then pressed it against his cheek.

'I'll call you from time to time,' he said. 'Take care.'

Unterrified, she lived her life, waiting for Prince and waiting for the thing to happen while he was gone. She was glad to have all this time to experiment with her happiness alone. He telephoned quite regularly, checking in from the mysterious human action he attended. He asked whether the thing had happened yet, and Amy said it hadn't.

Then something did happen. Amy wasn't sure whether it was the thing Prince meant. She thought not, on the whole, because it wasn't pleasant, it wasn't nice. Late on Sunday afternoon Amy was browsing over the bookcase in the sitting-room. Now what would he like me to read? she wondered. There were some hefty textbooks on the top shelf, among them
The Anatomy of Melancholy.
She worked the book out by its spine. It was heavier than she expected, and the dead weight made her hand drop down through the air. The pages windmilled, and something slipped out and wafted like a leaf to the floor.

It was an old photograph, oddly moist and limp to the touch; and the scene it showed immediately disturbed the eye. Seven men stood on a raised platform. The five men on the right were pale, top-hatted, with the sanctified air of aldermen or city fathers. Their faces were minutely averted from the camera's gaze; they looked clogged, qualmish, as if they were secretly trying not to be sick. The seventh man, on the far left, wore a black hood. The angled noose in his gloved hand hovered like a halo above the head of the sixth man, who alone held the camera's eye. His thin face was taut and unshaven, and there was something desperate and triumphant in his stare, almost a snigger of complicity in this terrible act he had goaded the world into. It was as if he were the punisher and they the punished—the nauseous city fathers and the hooded man who did not dare to show his face. Amy looked into the murderer's eyes. Poor bored idiot, she thought. She was about to replace the photograph and the book when she saw that something had been written on the back, just two words. They said: 'You wait'. Prince had written them. This saddened her and she didn't know why. She got to her feet and the doorbell rang.

Amy walked dazedly into the hall. She saw the shape waiting behind the rippled glass. She decided not to hesitate. She opened the door. Instantly her heart seemed everywhere at once; and then the two women embraced.

'I can't believe it,' said Baby a few minutes later. She blew her nose. 'You look so young, Amy. You look younger than
me.'

'Oh I don't.'

'I thought you were dead.'

'Don't say that. I'll start again.'

'Oh don't. Oh God. This is ridiculous ... What happened? Do you know now?'

'No. I still—I can't remember anything for certain.'

'But you're alive. And you're different. You were awful, Amy.'

'I know.'

'You were a cunt. I'm sorry. You were ... No, you haven't changed. You've just gone back to how you were before, when you were sixteen. Before you met
him
and changed like that. It's the eyes that make you look so young. They've completely lost their...'

'What?'

'That sullen, challenging look. That bored look.'

Amy said, 'How's father?'

'Dad? Oh all right. He's completely blind now, you know. Marge and George are wonderful. I haven't told them about—you know.'

'Yes, I think that's best.'

'Perhaps soon. Who knows?'

'Yes.'

'God! You know I've got a baby?'

Wo.'

'Yes. She's sweet.'

'And you're married?'

'Of course I'm married! You know me. That's why I can't stay long. I didn't think you'd be here anyway. I couldn't believe it.'

'He rang you, did he?'

'Mr Prince? No, he came round. Is he your man?'

'Yes,'said Amy.'He is.'

'Is it serious?'

'—Yeah,' she said, surprised. 'He saved my life really.'

'Yes, he seemed very nice. He cares about you a lot, I could tell. Oh God, I
have
to go. And I thought I'd never see you again.'

'But you will now.'

'Yes I will. Come on, see me out.'

The sisters stood together by Baby's car. Amy was the taller by a couple of inches, but they looked the same age out there. A schoolgirl cycled past, one hand resting forgetfully on her lap.

'It's his,' said Baby, tapping the roof of the car. 'Not bad, is it?'

'No. What's it like?'

'Being married? Oh it's fine. It's just—inevitable. It's just the next thing, like leaving home. You have to do it eventually. You wait.'

'What's your daughter called?'

'Not Amy, I'm afraid. I'll call the next one Amy if she's a girl. She's called Mary.'

'How strange.'

'Well it's a very common name.'

'What's his name? What's
your
name?'

'Bunting, worse luck. I've gone back to Lucinda. Baby Bunting. To hell with that. Give us your number then. I'll call you. Write it here. You must come over with your man and meet your niece. And your brother-in-law. God, it's so nice having a sister again.'

They embraced. Baby opened the car door. She paused. She turned and looked at Amy with great meaning. She said, "'How do I know I am me?"'

'... "Why? Are we twins?"' said Amy.

' "No, but I love thee."'

' "And I thee."'

'See? You wait,' said Baby. 'It'll all come back to you in time.'

The car pulled off. Amy watched it vanish in the evening haze.

To steady herself, and to see if she could be of any good there, Amy went next door and spent two hours with Mr and Mrs Smythe. It was impossible to go to this house without being forced to consume a great deal of tea and cake. Red-faced Mr Smythe smoked gurglingly on his pipe, a sly wood demon in the corner of the room. He didn't say or do much any more. On the carpet of the exhaustively beautified sitting-room, David licked his flossy stomach, one leg up like a shouldered rifle. Mrs Smythe served tea and talked, not for the first time, of those two sons of hers, Henry, the bachelor headmaster of a vast school in the North, and young Timothy, who had been killed by a drunken military policeman during his third year of voluntary service overseas—Timmy, who had always been a thinker, a poet, a seeker. In one of her tremulous reveries Mrs Smythe made the prediction that, were Henry ever to wed and have a son of his own, then Timothy would be reborn in the soul of the small child. Henry was fifty-four. Amy drank more tea. She wanted to tell Mrs Smythe about her sister and her sister's baby, but felt this might dash her. She asked if there was anything she could do for them both, and she meant it. She would have done anything they asked. But they said they were all right, so she finished her tea and went home.

The telephone was ringing when she got there, ringing with a kind of dogged petulance, its arms prissily folded. Amy was about to pick up the receiver when a perverse thought struck her. If she let it ring five more times it would not be Mr Wrong. She let it ring five more times. It was Prince. His voice said, 'Hi, it's me. Where have you
been?
I was going out of my
mind
here ... Oh. I see. Has it happened yet?... And was it nice? ... Good, good. I'm glad. Listen, I've got some last things to do. I'll be back tonight—I hope ... I won't be able to ring again but—wait up for me, will you? ... You wait. Soon then. Goodbye, Amy.'

Midnight passed.

Amy wasn't worried—no, not at all. How could she be in danger if Prince could leave her alone like this? Yet there was a restlessness in her. It had to do with the tone of his voice the last time he called—something reconciled, almost melancholy, but with a new kind of concern. He would come. And why should she fear?