Perfect Happiness (16 page)

She went upstairs, assuming that a neighbour needed her help, wondering if she had any more candles and feeling a rush of relief at the thought of company, any company. She opened the door and there stood Philip Landon, in a battered raincoat, bare-headed, water coursing down his face. He said, ‘Are you flooded? We haven't got a basement, but I know what happens to these houses with areas.’ Without waiting, he clattered down the stairs. She heard him exclaim, ‘Christ…’ He vanished outside into the area; she could just see him in the murk, his trousers rolled up, doing something with a stick. He came back in and said, ‘I don't think there's a hope, doing that. Eventually, it'll all run away, but I'm afraid it's going to leave one hell of a mess.’ She had followed him down the stairs; the blackness of the house seemed less black, she felt now more inclined to laugh than to cry. Philip had turned his attention to the carpet.

‘You're soaked,’ Frances said. ‘Here – let me find a towel.’

‘Never mind that. Take an end of this and we'll get it upstairs.’

Together they heaved the carpet up into the hall. Philip went down again and she heard him sloshing about with a bucket. ‘Have you got any more mopping-up equipment?’ he shouted. ‘And some more light down here would be a help.’

For the next hour they mopped and squeezed. The centre of the storm passed and they could hear it crashing over Hampstead or Golders Green. The electricity did not come on. Philip had packed the wadding more effectively against the doors and after a while the insidious ooze grew slighter. He said, ‘I think the worst may be over. We're lucky. I've known people have to be pumped out by the fire brigade. There's some basic defect in the drains, round here.’ Frances was surprised by his competence and energy; it was as though a second personality lurked behind that cynical and defeated manner.

Her back ached. She straightened. They were both barefoot and she had tied her cotton skirt between her legs to keep it out of the way. She saw Philip staring across the room at her, his gaunt face deeply shadowed in the candle-light so that he seemed gothic, a stone saint. He said, quite solemnly, ‘You looked like Anna Magnani in that Italian film about peasants in rice fields.’ She burst out laughing. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I meant it as a compliment. I used to think she was wonderful.’ He continued to gaze at her; she realized that he admired her and that she was stirred by this: the realization amazed her. She looked at her watch. ‘Heavens, it's half past nine. Look, I'll be all right now, Philip, you've been such a help. Do get back to Marsha.’

‘Marsha's at her sister's.’

‘Oh, of course – I remember. In that case we both need something to eat, and a drink.’

She made omelettes and a salad, gave Philip a bottle of wine to open, piled it all on to a tray which Philip carried up to the sitting room. She lit the candles in the silver holders on the mantelpiece; the room, suddenly, burst into conspiratorial festivity. Outside, the rain still fell, but softly now. Frances said, ‘I feel filthy, I must just go upstairs. There's a cloakroom on the far side of the hall, if you want.’

She washed and changed. Her own face, in the light of the candle, looked at her oddly from the mirror: shadowed, furtive, handsomer than she felt herself to be. She was bemused by the peculiarity of the evening, physically tired, no longer certain if she wanted this man out of the house or not. Slowly, she went down again and found that Philip had laid the food and drink out neatly on the low table. He had poured two glasses of wine and sat folded into one end of the sofa.

He was companionable, talking easily and without that lurking resentment. He told anecdotes of his days at the BBC that made her laugh. He did not refer once to Steven. She thought, I like him better than I'd realized, he's not so bad, he's better away from Marsha. She said, ‘It was nice of you to come to the rescue. I was feeling very helpless and abandoned. Truth to tell I was almost in tears.’

‘Then it must have been telepathic. I had a sudden feeling you might need baling out. In several ways.’

There was a silence, faintly charged. Frances refilled the glasses. ‘Anyway, I'll get the rest of the muck cleared out tomorrow and all in all it hasn't been so disastrous. I wish they'd give us back the electricity.’

‘I don't,’ said Philip. ‘It's nicer like this.’ He reached out suddenly and touched her hand. ‘Thank you for letting me stay. Truth to tell I was feeling a bit low myself. Weather-induced, no doubt – good pathetic fallacy stuff. I'm rather prone to that, which is why Spain agreed with me. Very frail, I know. Life would have been more agreeable if one were otherwise.’

‘Come,’ she said. ‘You're talking as if it were over.’

‘I'm fifty-five.’

‘I'm forty-nine myself.’

‘Well, I wouldn't have believed it. A happy life must be good for the constitution. Have you had a happy life?’

‘Yes,’ she said, after a moment, ‘I suppose I have.’

In the hall, the little Georgian carriage clock struck eleven. The rain gently rustled on the window. She looked carefully round the room, at her possessions, at the Victorian desk and the wrought-iron lamp-stand they bought in Spain and Steven's photograph on the book-case. She thought, please don't touch me again, on no account touch me, or I am not sure that I can answer for myself.

Philip lit a cigarette. ‘Is it a matter of constitution or of circumstances, do you think? I'm aware of being rather a gloomy bloke, but I've also felt things were loaded against me, which may be shifting the blame.’

‘It's both, I imagine.’

‘And who you happen to fetch up with. Marsha is somewhat of my disposition, I'm afraid. My first wife was a more invigorating person. Incidentally,’ he went on, ‘the thing that impresses most about you, if I may say so, is a sense of determined survival. Courage, I suppose. Sorry – don't want to embarrass. I just wanted to let you know. Now we'll talk about something else. Do you feel established here now? Despite the flood.’

She sat in silence for a few moments. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I am extremely lonely. Still. And I don't think I am especially brave. It is just that there is no alternative.’

His eyes, she could feel, were on her. She stared into her glass. She heard him say, ‘I'm sorry. Up to a point I can understand. Loneliness is something that has come my way, rather a lot.’ He laid his hand on her knee.

She did not move. It came to her that the whole evening, the whole slightly unreal time – the theatrical storm, the isolation in the middle of the city, the candle-light – was an aberration. It seemed to have nothing to do with the ordinary progression of days. She looked down at the hand on her knee, the hand of a stranger.

Philip said, ‘I assume that celibacy must be extremely trying. At least, I've always found it so.’

She looked at him. ‘Yes. It is.’

When she was lying under him, there on the sofa because she knew that she could not let him into her bed, it came to her that he had intended this since that first time she had been in his house. He did not say much. While they made love – if that is what they were making – he seemed withdrawn, intent. Once he said, ‘Is this all right, Frances?’ and when she replied, ‘It is now, it may not be later,’ he said, ‘I don't mean that. I mean is what I'm doing right. Is that what you like?’ She felt his alien penetration, and the greed of her response, she heard herself telling him to go on, she looked across the room and saw dimly the shape of Steven's face in the photograph and at that moment, violently, she came.

She had thought it impossible that she would sleep. After Philip had gone she had undressed and got into bed and lain there like a plank, quite rigid, her head on fire it seemed, and then all at once she had plunged into sleep as into a bottomless pit, and slept on and on, until suddenly it was bright day and downstairs the telephone was ringing.

‘Tab!’

The line crackled. Somewhere, faintly, Tab's voice was saying ‘Hello? Mum?’

‘Yes – it's me. Where are you? I thought you weren't coming back till Thursday.’ The puppy was barking in the cloakroom. She looked through the open door of the sitting room and saw the two glasses on the table, the rumpled sofa; the night swept back, shrivelling her. Through the crackles, Tab was saying something about a train.

‘Yes. Right. I'll come and meet you. Is anything wrong – you sound funny?’

Far away, Tabitha said bleakly that nothing was wrong. The pips went. Silence.

Frances put the receiver down and let the puppy into the garden. She leaned against the door-frame, watching it skitter in the flowerbed. She thought, in all the days since Steven died I have never felt more alone than now.

The morning shone. It was as though the storm had never been. She went upstairs, dressed in old clothes, came down and set about cleaning up the basement. She worked herself into a state of exhaustion; when she had finished there was little trace of the flood except a thin line of scum along the foot of the walls. She dragged the carpet out into the sun to dry. She scoured the sitting room. Then she searched in her address book for Patricia Geering's number, went to the telephone and dialled. When Patricia answered she said, ‘I'm sorry to have been so long getting in touch. There have been one or two problems. Your suggestion… don't suppose you'd still like me to come and help you on the journal?’

‘I heard about your son, but I gather he's all right now. I'm so glad. At the moment I have a girl on loan from the Registry but she doesn't have editorial experience.’ There was a pause. ‘I'd like to have you very much. How soon?’

‘Next week?’

‘Fine. It's part-time. Did I say? Two and a half days a week. I'll drop you a line about hours and what we pay.’

Patricia Geering sounded brisk and neutral. Just, Frances thought, what I need.

It was three days before Philip came back. When he did it was early evening and Frances was preparing a meal. Tabitha was upstairs in her room. Looking up through the kitchen window, Frances saw him on the opposite side of the street and, with dread, watched him stop, cross, approach the front door.

‘Hello, Frances.’

‘Hello.’

‘Are you busy?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘actually I was just getting the supper. My daughter's back from Scotland.’

They looked at each other, he without and she within. His expression changed though not a muscle of his face moved. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see.’

‘Come in for a minute, anyway.’

They went into the sitting room. She sat in the armchair, he on the sofa. He said, ‘How are you?’

‘I'm fine. Is Marsha back?’

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I'm to take it that the other night was an aberration?’

With exasperation, she felt herself flushing. She could not look at him. ‘Philip, I behaved very stupidly. Could we just forget all about it?’

‘You know,’ he said, ‘that that is not possible.’ He spoke with what sounded like satisfaction. ‘I would have said you behaved naturally. You liked it, Frances.’

There was a silence. ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘I did. But I'm afraid that wasn't anything very much to do with you.’

He got up and went over to the mantelpiece. He stood there looking first round the room and then down at her. He said, ‘I see. I'm not really in your league, am I, Frances? Not in Steven's class.’

‘That's unnecessary.’

‘Yes. Perhaps it was. I'm sorry.’ He went on standing there. The silence hung in the room, rank. At last he began to speak again. ‘I hated your husband. I can see him now, always with the right equipment, his cricket flannels clean, his pencils sharpened, his Latin translation done. There's nothing like a prep school for sorting out the sheep from the goats, then and thereafter. He was everything I wasn't. I was the form outcast, the one who was bad at almost everything, who was never picked for teams, whom even the masters despised. Not that your husband despised me, especially. He didn't need to. He barely noticed me. He was always captain of everything, top in everything, one of life's winners, he could afford to be gracious. But I hated him. I can remember exactly how it felt. I can remember when I first knew I hated him. He was form captain, and a prefect, so he was taking prep. I was whispering – causing a disturbance – having for once some small success as a joker, the insignificant take advantage of such windfalls. He told me not to. I persisted. He called me out, more in sorrow than in anger, I think, and made me spend the rest of the period standing in front of the others. I was tall for my age, taller than him; I can see him still, shorter and neater and knowing where he was going. After a while the others all started glancing at me and sniggering. He looked round. He said, “Shut up, all of you. Get on with your work.” He came over to me and said, “Your flies are undone, Landon.” After that I knew I hated him.’

Frances said, ‘You're not talking about Steven. You're talking about yourself.’

‘Oh yes, I daresay. I tried to take him on once, at his own level. Let me tell you about that too. Every year there was a Fifth Form Debate. It was a big event. The lords of creation on display – the thirteen year olds, those poised for the wider world. I put myself down to speak against Steven. The motion, I remember, was, “This House believes in God”. Racy stuff – it was a school that teetered on the edge of being progressive. I spoke for; Steven against. I don't imagine I believed in God any more than I do now but I think I imagined in a wild way that He'd be on my side. Do you want to know what happened?’