The Country Life (24 page)

‘Coffee?' she said.

‘Please,' acceded Toby, his gaze not flickering from the page. Pamela stood for a moment and read over his shoulder, a gesture the least part of whose motivation, I felt sure, was an interest in current affairs. Their bodies were very close, curled like parentheses around some shared but inadmissible aside. My intrusion on this intimate scene was becoming unbearable. Toby's smile was broadening as Pamela stood there behind him, and as if his mirth had insinuated itself up her connecting arm, she too began to smile. Before long, to my bewilderment, the two of them were shaking with silent, private mirth.

‘Is Martin upstairs?' I enquired in a clear voice.

‘What?' Pamela turned and looked at me, bleary with interruption, her eyes triumphant and annoyed. For a moment, she didn't seem to recognize me. ‘Oh, Stella, I
am
sorry!' she said then, after a pause. ‘Yes, you'll find him upstairs in his room.'

‘Thank you,' I curtly replied.

I walked smartly from the room and closed the door behind me; and as I stood in the dark ante-room was mortified to hear the muted sound of twin laughters burst forth from the other side. My thoughts were so racked with confusion and fury that it was not until I had slammed my way from the cramped vestibule that I was able to give substance to them; but in the empty, polished vault of the vast hall I knew that what I had just seen was not the morning reunion of mother and son, but that of
lovers.
I was astonished, and rather ashamed, at the boldness and vulgarity of my deduction; and yet I knew that I had hacked with this single crude thought right to the heart of the matter. This, I might say, was for me a most unusual experience. I am habitually a person in whose thoughts the insignificant looms large, while the vast and more perilous range of realities forms a dramatic but distant vista, a long and tortuous journey away. I had never even encountered in my life a situation which might have beaten a path to this particular suspicion, nor was I subject in so far as I knew to any tendency – over-imaginativeness, for example – which might have eased its passage. No, the thought was merely a response to what I had seen, and once established it formed a magnet for other things, which adhered themselves to it and gave it weight. Pamela's distracted behaviour the previous evening; her uncontainable disappointment at Toby's lateness; her failure, earlier, to tell him the news of Caroline's pregnancy; even her generally neurotic and overcharged demeanour, her drastic changes of mood, those irrational episodes in which I myself had played a reluctant part: the enormity of the accusation seemed capable of containing all this and more.

Within minutes, however, my exhilarating descent into moral turpitude had come to an abrupt halt. What was I thinking of, harbouring such horrible notions about people who, if occasionally maddening and often incomprehensible to me, were nevertheless decent? I lingered at the foot of the staircase, and in the prospect of its arduous slope saw the long and wearying climb back to reason which was the price of my brief but thrilling speculations. I tried as I slowly ascended the stairs to remember the details of my own mother's behaviour towards my brothers, in the penitent hope that it might mitigate Pamela's. There was certainly nothing of the kind between Edward and his mother either; but then, uncharitably I'll admit, I was unsure whether there was anything of the kind between Edward and anybody. If only in the name of justice, there should surely have been some similar bond between fathers and daughters; but other than Bounder's correspondence – which, if it signalled some special fondness, went both unappreciated and unreturned – I could think of nothing which distinguished my father's treatment of me from that he gave my brothers. I regretted, nevertheless, that I had not treasured these tokens more. Their expulsion to the tundra of London's waste-disposal system filled me both with retrospective guilt and with frustration at the impossibility of scanning them anew for evidence.

I had, at this point, reached the top of the stairs; and remembering that Martin was waiting for me, hurried the final distance along the corridor to his room. His door stood open, and through it I could see him sitting in his chair by the window. He was staring through the glass in deep thought. Seeing him thus, I was struck by how little I knew of his unattended life. The business of looking after him, the work of acquiring familiarity with his needs, permitted the other side of his nature to fall into neglect. I realized – although this may seem obvious – that what to me was employment was life to him; something which in other centuries or places was, I am
sure, the grounds for envy and resentment, but here was the cause of feelings of personal good fortune.

‘Where have you been, Stel-la?' he said when I presented myself He was wearing a red T-shirt which drained his skin of colour. ‘I've been waiting for you.'

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘I was in the kitchen. I thought I ought to wait for your mother before I came up.'

‘Why?' He screwed up his face.

‘It – I don't know. It didn't seem polite just to march through the house.'

‘You're so funny.' He paused, as if concentrating. ‘On the one hand' – he measured it mathematically with his hand – you've got the guts to leave your husband, abandoning everything you know and casting yourself on the kindness of strangers. And on the other, you're scared of coming into someone else's house, even if they're expecting you.'

‘I thought,' I said in a steely tone, ‘that we had agreed not to discuss that matter any further. As for the business of coming into the house, I did not say that I was scared; merely that I thought it polite to alert your mother to my presence, in case I interrupted something private.'

Given what I had just seen in the kitchen, I didn't have the impression that Pamela was particularly concerned about guarding her own privacy; nor, if I were honest, that she thought my presence important enough to want to conceal things in it.

‘We didn't agree not to discuss it,' said Martin. ‘I just promised not to tell anyone else about it.' His hands fiddled in his lap and he looked at them sulkily. ‘Anyone would think you didn't trust me, Stel-la.'

‘I don't trust you,' I said, crossing the room and sitting down in the leather armchair. The sun from the window fell directly on it, and an ache sprung up immediately across my forehead. ‘I don't know you well enough to trust you.' This sounded unkind. ‘Although I'm sure I will,' I added wearily, ‘eventually.'

I was feeling rather unwell, having had no breakfast. Pamela's failure to offer me coffee grated on my memory.

‘You look tired,' said Martin sweetly. ‘Would you like some coffee?'

‘Yes,' I automatically replied. Seconds later I remembered that a trip downstairs would necessitate a further confrontation with the love-birds. ‘No, it's too much bother.'

‘It isn't. I've got everything up here. I've got biscuits,' he said, leaning forward and whispering the word seductively in my ear, ‘which might tempt you.'

I had a strong feeling that I was about to be blackmailed. Unfortunately, so importunate were my hunger and thirst that I was obliged to accept Martin's offer.

‘OK,' I grudgingly acceded.

‘One lump or two, Stel-la?' said Martin, launching himself off across the room. I saw his pumping arms below his T-shirt as he passed; thin, articulated by muscle, like animals' limbs.

‘None.' He reached a cupboard with a slatted door, and when he opened it I saw a neat, minuscule arrangement of sink, fridge and kettle. ‘You've got everything!' I exclaimed, surprised.

‘Well, I can't go downstairs, silly Stel-la, every time I want something,' he said, in an amplified version of his pantomime whisper. ‘Can I? I'd have no
independence.
Would I?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘You should
think
'
–
he tapped his forehead exaggeratedly – ‘about what it's like to be
me.
No
fun
, Stel-la. No fun at
all.
Nothing to
think
' – again the tapping – ‘about except my little
Stel-la
and her
secrets
—'

‘Stop that instantly,' I said, sitting up in my chair.

Martin gave a high-pitched giggle and began filling the kettle at the sink.

‘I was only joking,' he said, in a more normal voice. ‘It's for your own good, Stel-la. It's bad for you to bottle everything up. You'll get cancer.'

‘If I get cancer,' I replied, ‘it won't be because I have refused to sate your curiosity about my private life. In any case, that was a very tactless thing to say. How do you know my parents didn't die of cancer?'

‘Sorry.'

‘In fact,' I continued, rather unworthily determining to get my own back on him, ‘I was going to tell you a bit more about it. But now that you've said that, I've changed my mind.'

‘Oh,
Stel-la
!' Martin wheeled round in his chair, his mouth opened wide in astonishment. ‘You can't do that!'

‘I can.' The pregnant, silent kettle began to stir behind him. ‘You must think me very stupid if you doubt that I can beat you at your own game. And a very silly game it is too, I might say.'

Martin ducked his head and began busying himself with cups.

‘You should know by now,' I continued, ‘that the best way to find things out is to listen. If people feel they are being tricked or interrogated, they won't tell you anything. If you give them time and silence, they'll come out with it eventually. Either because they're embarrassed or because they're offended at your lack of interest. Most people are fairly selfish. They like to talk about themselves. And the more invisible you are, the more they'll do it.'

The click of the kettle punctuated this soliloquy. Martin said nothing more, although for a while I barely noticed this above the clatter of his preparations. When finally he had loaded everything onto a tray, however, and was bearing it back across the room in his lap, I saw from the compressed seam of his mouth and his too-nonchalant expression that he was implementing my policy in a manner which could soon become infuriating.

‘It doesn't work if you make it that obvious,' I remarked. He handed me a cup, and with the other proffered a plate of biscuits. I glimpsed his imploring eyes. ‘What on earth could you want to know?' I said. ‘It can't be that interesting.'

He nodded energetically. I took one of the biscuits. I was rather impressed by Martin's hospitality. It was, I had to admit, more pleasant being in his room than in any other room in the house. I shifted around slightly so that I was out of the sun and raised the biscuit to my mouth. As I did so, I caught Martin's eye. He was watching me so intently that it was impossible for me to eat it. Instead I took a sip of coffee. He tipped his head back slightly, miming my action, and swallowed air.

‘What?' I said finally, in exasperation. He shook his head mutely. ‘I met your brother just now,' I continued conversationally, in the hope that it would jolt him from this irritating course. ‘In the kitchen.'

‘The
kitchen
?' mouthed Martin silently, raising his eyebrows in mockery and putting a fluttering hand to his lips.

‘If you don't desist from this unreasonable behaviour, I am going to leave you to do your homework.'

There was a long pause, during which I could not restrain myself from putting the biscuit in my mouth and chewing it as unobtrusively as I was able. Its sweetness was unimaginable, delicious.

‘What did you think of him, then?' enquired Martin eventually. His face was sullen. ‘Did you
fancy
him? Everybody
fancies
him.'

‘He is very handsome.'

‘More handsome than
Edward
?'

‘Yes.'

‘Girls are so stupid.'

‘I was merely stating a fact.'

‘Did he try and
get off
with you?'

‘Oh, for goodness' sake! Of course he didn't. Anyway,' I added incautiously, ‘I'm not his type.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I just do.'

‘Was
Edward
your type?'

I saw instantly Martin's latest tactic, which was to lead me by a ladder of association to the precipice of self-revelation.

‘I suppose he must have been. I don't know.'

‘You're my type,' he said then, sitting back firmly in his chair and folding his arms.

‘Don't be silly.'

‘It's true! What's wrong with me, anyway?'

‘You're too young.' I wondered what this self-deluding boldness signified. ‘And besides, I work for you. This kind of conversation is inappropriate.'

‘I think it's romantic,' said Martin dreamily. ‘So what was wrong with Edward? You're very fussy, Stel-la.'

‘If I was fussy I wouldn't have married him,' I said smartly, before I could stop myself.

‘That's not very nice.'

‘Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. He had – he had many good qualities.'

‘Like what?'

‘Well, he was clever.' I tried to think of something else to say about him. ‘He was pleased with himself, I suppose. Yes, that probably describes him best.'

‘Were you
in love
with him? I can't imagine you
in love
.'

‘I don't see why not,' I crossly replied. I was troubled by this remark, coming as it did so close to what I had often suspected was the truth. ‘Anyway, you've asked me that before. I don't know what love means. If it's just a feeling, then it can stop. I don't see the point of trying so hard to preserve it.'

There was a pause. I knew that Martin was looking at me, although I didn't meet his eye. I was beginning to feel rather upset, and sensed strongly that I should bring a stop to the conversation.