Presence of Mind (7 page)

‘I ought to do some more work too,' Lance said, still in that clipped voice, as she went out of the room. ‘We fixed Stella's first sitting for Tuesday morning and I'm at college all day tomorrow. I'd like to finish off the canvas I'm working on.'

‘Not now, surely?' I protested.

‘It's as good a time as any. We've a good two hours in hand, since they've all gone so early.' He glanced at my face and added more gently, ‘You look in need of a rest. Why don't you settle down with the Sunday papers until supper time?'

And before I could reply he had pushed open the french windows and gone out into the rain.

Throughout the following day, I was haunted by the feeling that we were all marking time, that some traumatic climax was rushing towards us and until it actually reached and engulfed us there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves.

At breakfast we all showed signs of strain. Briony, pale and listless, shaded her eyes from the uncaring brightness of the sun.

‘Another headache?' I asked anxiously.

‘The same one, actually. It lasted all night.'

‘Have you taken your migraine pills?'

‘Yes, but they never work.'

‘I think you should go back to bed, dear,'

‘Oh Mother, I can't! There's far too much going on at the moment. I can't afford to miss anything, with the exams only a month away.'

‘But you're in no state to take anything in anyway.' Suppose she had one of those strange spells at school? She might already have had one. At the back of my mind an echo of Max's voice was murmuring something which I couldn't recall but which I felt might be important.

‘Don't fuss, Mother,' Briony said gently.

‘If you insist on going, at least promise you'll phone if you feel really ill. I could be there in ten minutes.'

‘I promise. Any chance of a lift, Daddy?'

‘Only one way, I'm afraid. My last lecture finishes at three-thirty today so you'll have to make your own way home.'

‘That's all right, I'm meeting Mark anyway.'

Lance folded his napkin with deliberate restraint. ‘Don't you think,' he began quietly, ‘that you're seeing rather too much of young Mark? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now today too?'

‘Oh don't be stuffy, darling! I need a bit of relaxation and so does he. If you'll hang on I'll just get my school bag and then I'm ready.' The door swung to behind her.

He looked across at me challengingly. ‘Now don't start telling me I'm being possessive again. Don't
you
think she's seeing too much of him?'

‘Not really. After all, she keeps to the rule of no mid-week dates during term time. He'll only be walking back from school with her.'

‘It's this implication that they can't let a day pass without seeing each other which I find rather hard to take.'

‘Weren't you the same at her age?'

‘At her age, or very little older, I was doing my National Service.'

‘But not in a monastery, I presume?'

He smiled slightly. ‘All right, I'm being unreasonable. You're probably right.'

‘Okay, chauffeur!' She had appeared in the doorway again, still pale but smiling determinedly. Lance stood up, patting his pocket to check that he had his keys.

‘By the way, Ann, will you ask Moira to be sure to write to that new framing firm which sent us its price list? It sounded quite reasonable. And there's the letter from the Arts Council that came on Saturday. I've left it on her desk.'

‘I'll have a word with her.'

The front door closed behind them and another long day stretched ahead of me. Moira Cassidy was Lance's part-time secretary who came three days a week to look after the business side of his work – arranging loans to galleries, exhibitions and so on and keeping notes in the large desk diary of his various engagements. Two of her days coincided with Lance's days at college. He had found that if he was available she kept distracting him with queries which she could really deal with quite adequately herself. He therefore left her taped messages and they held a weekly conference on Friday mornings. It seemed to work well. It was ridiculous to resent Moira, but I knew that I did. I would have been only too happy to have taken over her work for Lance, but my tentative offer, early in our marriage, had been brushed aside. ‘Nonsense, of course I couldn't let you work for me. Anyway, Moira has all the contacts.'

In the same way, there were times when I resented Mrs Rose – ‘Rosie' to both Lance and Briony, though I'd never managed to achieve such informality myself – who made me feel in the way in my own kitchen, as the Giffords, father and son, resented any attempts I might make at gardening. I was expected to supervise, instruct, admire – and sit in a deck chair. ‘My shrubs' and ‘my annuals', it was tacitly implied, were to be left strictly to those who knew how to deal with them.

Slowly I stood up and pushed my chair back under the table. There wasn't even any need to clear the dishes. I paused for a moment to glance through the open door of the little office, sandwiched at the back of the hall between kitchen and cloakroom. The sunshine had already reached one corner of it, falling across the desk and the dark mound of the covered typewriter. On the black surface lay a sheet of paper, doubtless the letter to which Lance had referred.

Half my resentment of Moira was caused by the conviction that she despised me for what must have seemed my uselessness. I couldn't blame her. She herself was divorced and lived in a small flat in Rushyford with her widowed mother. She would have tidied the flat and prepared the old lady's lunch before arriving here at the Lodge on the dot of nine o'clock to deal efficiently with Lance's correspondence. And on the days that he didn't require her, she worked on the cash desk of one of the local supermarkets.

Even as I stood there broodingly there was the sound of a car drawing up outside, a light step on the gravel, and Moira's voice behind me. ‘Good morning, Mrs Tenby. Another lovely day after the storm.'

I roused myself, ‘Yes, indeed. By the way, my husband asked me to remind you about the framers –'

‘That's all right. I wrote to them on Friday.' She briskly removed her gloves and placed them with her neat, square handbag on top of the filing cabinet. ‘And I presume that's the letter about the travelling exhibition? It'll be rather tight getting the Council the pictures they want. The exhibition starts the week after the Lavenham showing. Still, no doubt Bourlets will cope as usual.'

As she spoke she was neatly slitting open the morning post which Mrs Rose had left on her desk, her long fingers quick and methodical. Everything about her carried through the impression of efficiency: her fair hair tidily pinned up into a no-nonsense pleat, large eyes behind large horn-rimmed spectacles, large mouth, large straight teeth for which she'd doubtless needed a brace as a child. ‘All the better to eat you with!' I thought facetiously. She was the personification of the perfect secretary, even to staying uncomplainingly overnight on the few occasions when pressure of work demanded it, and sleeping perfectly contentedly in the attic bedroom across the landing from Mrs Rose. At such times I had at first attempted to inveigle her into one of the guest rooms, invited her to eat with us, and so on, but my tentative overtures had been firmly and politely declined. In Moira Cassidy's eyes she was one of the staff, and she had no intention of mixing socially with us. In the same way she would never attend any of our open days or parties unless specifically requested by Lance and then strictly for business reasons.

‘Can I do anything for you, Mrs Tenby?'

Translation, I thought ironically: Please stop hovering and let those of us who have work to do get on with it in peace!

‘No, thank you.' Obediently I closed the door and a moment later the quick staccato tapping of the typewriter reached my ears. Lance would have dropped Briony at school by now. Anxiously I hoped she would be all right.

Across the hall the telephone shrilled, making me jump.

The tapping behind the closed door stopped as Moira waited to see if I would take the call. It was probably for Lance anyway, but I picked up the phone and was unusually glad to hear Cynthia's voice over the wire.

‘Ann darling, you are free this afternoon, aren't you? I was speaking to Paula Forrest at your place yesterday, and guess what? She plays bridge! Isn't that a stroke of luck? I think I can probably coax Stella to make up a four – if she's not ensconced with Lance, that is.'

‘The sittings don't start until tomorrow.' I hesitated. Bridge would be one way of passing the afternoon, but I felt it might be diplomatic not to become too friendly with Paula Forrest. I knew Lance would not invite them again and if we were seeing a lot of each other this could be embarrassing.

‘Well?' Cynthia demanded impatiently. ‘Are you free or aren't you?'

‘Yes. Thanks, Cynthia, I'd love to come.'

‘Fine. My place at two, then.'

I replaced the receiver. In the office the machine had already started up again. I smiled a little grimly to myself. Bridge in the afternoon – the height of middle-class decadence! It was just as well I'd answered the phone myself.

The morning dragged on. I had coffee. I watered the house plants. I changed the flowers in the sitting-room bowl. And wherever I went I seemed to be followed by the ticking of clocks. I hadn't realised we had so many in the house. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Slowly, with inexorable deliberation, time was passing, bringing us nearer to – what?

I was thankful when it was time to drive the short distance up the road to Cynthia and Edgar's house.

‘My goodness,' Stella remarked as she swiftly dealt the cards, ‘Lance is a forceful character, isn't he? I happened to mention that Tuesday is my day for the hairdresser and he just said, “Cancel it!” My dear, he can't have any idea of how ghastly I look if I miss that weekly ritual!'

I laughed. ‘But you must admit that an earth mother is unlikely to sport a perm!'

‘
Earth mother?
Ye gods, is that how he sees me? And there was I thinking I'd be all Gainsborough-like and glamorous! Does that mean I can't have my hair done till the thing's finished? It could take weeks!'

‘He won't be concentrating on your hair for weeks,' I said consolingly.

‘You should wear it short as I do,' Paula remarked, ‘then you could wash it yourself.'

Paula's hair was certainly short, but cut in a severe style which most people would find hard to wear. It was part of her twenties image no doubt, as was the shapeless – but pure silk – dress which hung on her rather bony body. To complete the picture a lorgnette was attached to the long beads round her neck. Paula was in fact very short-sighted but she had turned the defect to maximum advantage. Very sophisticated, I thought, and rather unapproachable. I wondered if Max had ever tried to analyse his wife, and my thought was echoed in part by Cynthia, who, having played a hand, said interestedly:

‘Do tell us all about that brilliant husband of yours, Paula. I hardly dared open my mouth in his presence for fear of incriminating myself!'

‘I don't suppose he considers people he meets socially in that way,' Stella put in comfortably.

‘Actually I'm not so sure.' Casually Paula played a trump and scooped up the hand. ‘It's so much a part of his life that he can't help mentally assessing people, whether he means to or not.' Unwillingly I remembered Max's attentive examination of the painting and the blind, closed look on Lance's face and tried without success to dispel the lingering sense of unease latent in the memory.

‘But is there much call for work of that kind here?' Stella was asking. ‘I should have thought the English were too phlegmatic and down to earth to need psychiatrists. Surely he'd do better in America or somewhere, where everybody seems to have one!'

Paula smiled slightly. ‘I'm sure that Max's reply to that would be that it's the seemingly phlegmatic who often turn out to be a positive mass of repression and buried neuroses! But seriously, a lot more attention is being paid to mental health, even here, than there ever used to be.'

‘Not in Rushyford, surely?' objected Cynthia, raising her finely pencilled eyebrows.

‘His consulting rooms are in Bury but he has days at various psychiatric wards round about.'

‘It must be fascinating,' Cynthia remarked with an envious sigh. ‘Really, you know, I do find it rather galling. Your husbands are all so
interesting!
Max is all clued up on psychology, Lance is a brilliant artist, and Simon is so devastatingly handsome that it raises one's morale just to be seen with him. And what have I managed to achieve? Edgar!'

It was impossible not to laugh, but I felt a niggling sense of disloyalty. Edgar might not be brilliant or an oil painting but he was kind and steady and dependable, attributes which didn't necessarily apply to the other three.

The afternoon wore on. My mind was only half on the game, but we weren't playing too seriously and it didn't seem to matter. I had the impression that Paula had expected a higher standard and I did not doubt that the next time Cynthia hopefully rang for a bridge date, Mrs Forrest would regretfully have a prior engagement. It struck me as amusing that I should have worried about becoming too friendly with Paula. Obviously she chose her own friends, and there would not be many who received her confidences.

The last rubber, as was often the case, took a long time to finish, and it was almost six o'clock when I finally returned to Fairfield Lodge. It was on occasions like this that I guiltily showered blessings on Mrs Rose, who would have the dinner preparations well in hand. With an increased spurt of anxiety about Briony I hurried into the house.

I knew immediately that something was wrong and I turned without hesitation into the sitting-room. Briony was lying in a crumpled little heap on the hearth-rug.