The Chainmakers (40 page)

'And Robert... how is he? Is he still painting? His family must be quite grown up now.'

'Yes, his boy is seventeen this year, he is also called Robert you know.'

'Yes, he is just a little younger than James,' Anna said faintly.

'Yes. He has two girls as well of course, I think I told you in one of my letters. Cressida is fifteen this year and Beatrice a year younger, both at such a lovely age.' Florence's eyes misted as she added, 'Of course I don't see them any more, I haven't seen them since they were quite small.'

'Oh?' Anna said with concern. 'Do they not travel to see you? Perhaps you could have gone to Cannes...'

'No Anna, you don't understand,' Florence interrupted gently. 'Robert and Delphine do not live together now, not for some years.' She hesitated. 'I did try to put it in a letter to you, but I tore it up. It's not the sort of thing you can write down somehow...'

The subject was obviously distressing, and Anna said gently, 'I'm so sorry Florence. It must have been painful for you, not to see your grandchildren.'

'Yes it was, but to be honest I can't blame Delphine. After she and Robert separated... (well, perhaps separated gives the wrong impression, she threw him out), Delphine wanted to sever all links with Robert, and that included his family. She wrote me a long letter explaining what had happened. Of course it was only her point of view but in all the circumstances I can't blame her.' Florence looked up, and Anna saw her eyes were full of tears. 'He is my son, Anna, and you know I love him, but he has always been such a... such a... libertine.'

It was not the word Anna had expected, and she felt a momentary shock. 'Oh I'm sure not Florence,' she soothed, and was astonished at the old lady's bitter response.

'Don't try to make excuses for him Anna,' she said. 'I have heard them all, over and over again, and from his own lips. You knew him for a short time when he was young, and even then I was worried about him, he has never been able to leave the ladies alone.' Her mouth twisted. 'Ladies is the wrong word, I mean women... or worse.'

'Florence!' Anna said, genuinely perturbed. 'You don't mean that.'

'Oh yes I do.' Florence gave a rueful smile. 'You know Anna, when Robert said he was taking you to France that summer I thought the worst, even then. I thought he intended to try to take advantage of you.' She smiled again. 'I should have known you had too much sense to allow yourself to be compromised.' She sighed. 'I knew him so well you see, even then.' She hesitated, and then asked quietly, 'Was I right? Did he try ...?'

Her eyes met Anna's, and there was more than a question there. It was a plea.

Anna was merciful. 'You were wrong,' she said. 'Robert was always a perfect gentleman towards me.'

Florence's smile was of relief as well as gratitude. 'I'm really glad,' she said, 'I was always a little worried about that. You probably think I shouldn't talk of Robert this way, but since he came home he's been such a trial.'

'Came home? You mean he's in England?'

Florence looked surprised. 'Of course, didn't I tell you? He came home about two years ago, he had nowhere left to go you see, nowhere he would be welcome. After years of racketing around France, pretending to paint...'

'Pretending?' Anna interrupted.

'Yes, I call it pretending because he always said he was painting but he never completed anything. The paintings he did of you here, and that summer when you were at "La Maison Blanche," were the only real paintings he ever did.'

'I see.' Anna found these revelations astonishing. She attempted lightness. 'Well at least you must be able to see Robert more often, now he's in England,' she said.

'See him? Sometimes I wish I didn't. Men are such dreadful patients, and Robert must be one of the worst.'

'Patients? Is Robert ill then?'

Florence looked embarrassed. 'Oh Anna, I'm sorry, I thought you understood. Robert has come home to die. He's upstairs, I'll take you to see him if you wish.'

Florence got slowly to her feet, and then caught sight of Anna's anguished face. 'I'm sorry dear, perhaps you would prefer not to see him, but he has so few visitors apart from Andrew and me. It will be quite proper, I shall come with you.'

Anna found her tongue. 'Yes, of course. I'd like to see him.'

Florence moved so slowly that the journey up the well remembered staircase seemed interminable, but at last they were outside the heavy oak door to Robert's room, and Anna's heart was thumping so hard in her chest that she thought she would surely suffocate.

The huge bulk lying in the big double bed lay inert, turned away from the light streaming in from the bay window, and at first Anna thought they must be in the wrong room. Florence went over to the bed and said 'Robert dear, you have a visitor.' There was no response and she repeated, 'Robert dear, a visitor for you.' The bulky mass under the bedclothes moved, and from beneath the quilt a large face appeared, blotchy and ravaged, the fleshy jowls hanging heavily over a thick flannel nightshirt.

Anna stared. This was not Robert. Not only was it not him, it was nothing like him, or like he had ever been. Florence said, 'Come on dear, I'll help you sit up.' She put her hand under his arm and attempted to help him pull himself up, but it was painful work, and in spite of her revulsion Anna went to the other side of the bed and put a hand under his other arm, and they hauled him up onto the pillows. The grotesque figure in the bed relaxed his head back, panting with effort, and said 'Who's that?'

Anna stared at him and he stared back, there was not a hint of recognition from either of them. It could not be Robert, she told herself, those piggy eyes, almost hidden in the fleshy swollen eyelids, that patchy grey hair which seemed not to have thinned evenly, but to have come out in clumps, leaving areas of baldness interspersed with tufts of sparse, wispy thatch.

'It's Anna, dear,' Florence was saying. 'Little Anna Gibson, you remember. I told you we had kept in touch, she's been living in America.'

The small eyes glinted, but there was no change of expression. He stared at Anna again.

'Anna,' Florence went on earnestly. ' "The Chainmaker's Child," who Daddy painted. You remember dear, you painted her too. She went to France with you many years ago, to "La Maison Blanche."'

Anna began to feel she was in some sort of horrific nightmare, from which she must fight to wake up. This was not Robert, she told herself, it couldn't be. Suddenly the man in the bed turned, a small gesture, a movement of the head as if to flick back a lock of hair which was no longer there, and she knew at last that this bloated creature was indeed Robert.

To her embarrassment he appeared to have completely forgotten her. Despite Florence's encouragement, his expression remained vacant and disinterested. Anna was beginning to feel slightly sick, partly from the shock of Robert's appearance, but also from the heavy putrid smell which emanated from the bed. She turned towards the window, her stomach heaving, and saw the picture on the opposite wall. She caught her breath. It was Robert's painting of herself, seated on the grass above the beach at Locquirec. The freshness and beauty of the scene was out of place in the fetid atmosphere of decay and death, and Anna approached the picture, drawn as if by a magnet. She feasted her eyes on the well remembered details, as if she would gather its cherished secrets to herself. The deep rooted treasury of half forgotten moments came suddenly to the fore and on impulse she grasped the painting with both hands and took it down.

'Look Robert,' she said, balancing the canvas on the bed so he could see it. 'This is me. At Locquirec. Remember?'

The vacant eyes wandered over the picture for a few moments. Slowly there was a glimmer, a second of recognition, then a horrible leering grimace which split the livid face and revealed the slack, slavering mouth. 'The little... chainmaker,' he gasped, his words slurring with effort. 'Was good fun... plump little bosom...' He gave a kind of involuntary snort, as if he would laugh if he could. He wagged a pudgy finger at the picture. 'Ignorant as hell...' he wheezed, 'But I taught her...' The wheezing became worse and degenerated into a coughing fit as he spat out  'I had 'em all... every one I ever wanted... and they loved it... all of them...'

The fat hand grabbed at the quilt as the paroxysm increased. When at last it subsided he gasped, 'Molly Fleming... what a doer!'

'Robert be quiet!' Florence retorted. She turned to Anna, and her face was quite serene. 'I'm afraid he doesn't remember you, my dear, he has you mixed up with someone else. I'm so sorry, we had better leave him to rest.'

Florence rearranged Robert's pillows as Anna, trembling slightly, replaced the picture. A wave of nausea swept over her, and she hastened to the door, unable even to turn her head for a last sight of the pathetic figure who had once been her lover. Her numbed mind could cope with only one thought, "Get away, get away..." and once back in the sitting room she feigned surprise at the time, and explained to Florence that she must leave. The old lady was apologetic.

'I am sorry Anna, I realise now it would have been best for you not to see Robert. I have grown used to it of course, but his appearance is a shock to anyone who hasn't seen him for some time. And his memory... it's the illness of course, the brain damage is progressive...'

As the hired car made its way to Sandley Heath Anna was in turmoil. Her mind kept returning to the big bedroom at High Cedars, to the foul mouthed revolting shambles that Robert had become. She still could not believe it, and yet...

The indicators had been there all the time, she now acknowledged bitterly, if only she had possessed the wit to see them. How could she have been so wrong, so deluded? In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, she had clung to the idea that Robert had felt as she did, that their love affair had been something very special. She now saw with devastating clarity that for Robert their affair had been nothing more than one in a long series of such liaisons, and she felt shamed and degraded by the knowledge.

As she began to recover her equanimity, Anna realised it was perhaps understandable that she had been taken in as a young and inexperienced girl, but since then...? Could she ever forgive herself for holding on to her girlish dream for so long, and not only holding on, but cherishing it, nurturing it, until it became more real than reality itself?

Reality.

Reality was Clancy, and James, and the business and New York, and the beloved family she was going to see very soon. Her preoccupation with the past had caused Clancy unhappiness, she knew that, and now it was too late to put it right.

The driver stopped the car, and turned to speak to her.

'Are you sure this is the right place madam?'

'Yes, we are almost there.' Anna said. 'Take the next turning right and go down the hill into Sandley Heath. Drive slowly please, I want to look.'

The driver raised his eyebrows but complied with the request. Yours is not to reason why, he told himself. If this fine lady wants to go slumming in a rough area it's her business I suppose. I only hope the kids don't throw stones at the car. This may be the first car ever to drive down here, he thought, noting the grimy ramshackle terraces and the general air of neglect.

As the car made its way down the hill Anna opened her window. The familiar smell of home drifted in, an odour of smoke, mud and soot, but there was something missing. Anna smiled, the middens in Tibbets Yard had been pulled down.