The Essence of the Thing (4 page)

12

‘Is that all you’re having? Just cereal? Don’t you want some eggs and bacon? Goodness! Perhaps you’d like porridge. No? Well, I suppose you know best.’

‘Of course he does. Of course he knows best. Truly to God, Sophie, you’d think he was five years old. Croissants, that’s what he wants. That’s what they eat for breakfast up in London. Croissants, French croissants. Should’ve got some in. What?’

‘Don’t be silly, Hugo. The very idea. Jonathan doesn’t eat croissants. You don’t eat croissants, do you, Jonathan? No, see, he’s having some toast. Have some of that marmalade, darling, it’s from the last lot I made for the WI stall, a bit runny, but you just have to eat it fast before it drips. Oh, but you used to
love
marmalade! I remember sending it to you at school. Didn’t I? Well, I gave you some to take back with you. I remember. Marmalade. You used to insist on it.’

‘Lot of rubbish.’

‘What?’

‘Lot of rubbish. Here. Listen to this.’

Hugo Finch, JP, began reading from the
Telegraph
. ‘Senior back-benchers,’ he began, ‘are reported…’ and so it went on: a further chapter in the gruesome, yet frequently hilarious, saga of the island people who had given the planet its common language and virtually all its games. What exactly were they working on now? None could truly say; many were the vain attempts to do so, but the question was beyond the scope of the merely human intelligence. Hugo concluded his reading.

‘Splendid stuff,’ said Jonathan, at the end of his tether.

His father stared. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What did you say?’ He looked apoplectic.

‘Splendid,’ said Jonathan. ‘Splendid!’

‘Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?’

‘Yes, he’s joking, Hugo. He doesn’t mean it.’

‘I’ll tell you what he can do if he does: he can go straight back to London on the next train.’

‘I’ve got a car.’

‘Then bloody go and get into it and drive away, then! Splendid, he says! Splendid! Wants horsewhipping! Croissants! London! Horsewhipping!’

Hugo flapped the newspaper straight with a loud
crack
and barricaded himself behind it. ‘Croissants!’ he muttered.

‘Excuse me,’ said Jonathan, getting up. He went out into the garden and walked about slowly, happily. It had taken years for him to learn that when they wind you up, the thing to do is wind them right back. Croissants—
French
croissants! Glorious!
Splendid!

13

The splendour passed; Jonathan was possessed once more by the familiar demon whose dark oppressing wings enfolded his mind. He sat down on a garden seat and leaned back, closing his eyes against the bright spring sunshine, listening to the countryside sounds, trying, failing, to shun thought, recollection, reflection.

Why this abiding darkness? Wasn’t the worst over and done? Nicola, for all he now knew, might be gone, out of his sight, when he returned to London the following evening; he might even now be effectively free: free of all the terrible demands of that scrutiny, that intimacy, that sharing of the self. Free, and alone: to be alone was to be free.

Suddenly the weight of a human being fell onto the seat beside him and a voice loudly spoke to him. ‘Ah! Here you are!’ It was his mother, whose approach had been silenced by the lawn across which she had advanced.

Oh,
God
. No matter where one was, there was someone, some woman, peering into one’s soul. It was intolerable. He had even (so he fancied) caught his secretary apparently at it. They peered into one’s soul and left one naked and helpless.

He sat up. ‘I was just thinking of going for a walk,’ he said.

‘Oh, but do stay for a moment now I’m here,’ she said. ‘Do tell me how Nicola is getting on. Such a pity she couldn’t come with you, when the weather’s so nice.’

What a pity you are not married: have no children: aren’t happier to be here: but see how tolerant we are, have always been; how tolerant, how patient. All the younger generation seem to be the same, all living together without benefit of clergy. Of course they settle down in the end. Mostly. When would Jonathan’s
end
arrive, though? It was taking such a very long time. And why no Nicola this weekend, after all?

‘She always enjoys the garden so much, doesn’t she?’ she went on.

‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘I suppose she does.’

‘So she’s quite well, is she?’ Not quite what we would have liked for Jonathan,
ideally
, but still, quite a nice girl.
Quite
a nice girl. Highly educated, of course; as they all are these days—funny, isn’t it?

‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Good,’ said his mother. ‘Well, you must make sure you bring her next time.’

‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘Sure thing.’

Oh ho. You bet. Sorry, Ma.

14

On Saturday (while Jonathan basked, ate, walked, fumed, bashed croquet balls between hoops, and intermittently gloated) Nicola cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards. She cleaned the gas cooker, especially the oven. She even washed down all the paintwork, including the skirting boards, and she did two loads of washing, back to back. Then she washed her hair.

Mrs Brick had been in a few days before so there wasn’t a lot to be done to the rest of the flat, but she did what there was, and a little more besides.

On Sunday morning she polished the mirrors and the insides of the windowpanes and the television screen, and she washed all the china dogs and put them back on the mantelpiece in slightly different positions. After lunching off a tuna sandwich and an orange (Jonathan had overdone roast lamb and apple pie) she settled down to the ironing. She was getting through the time nicely.

She was just beginning on Jonathan’s shirts (ah! Jonathan’s shirts: God wears the exact same kind) when the telephone rang.

‘Nicola? It’s Lizzie.’

‘Oh, Lizzie.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m well, thanks, Lizzie. Are you?’

‘Yes, I’m well too. Listen, darling, about next weekend.’

Oh God oh
God
.

‘Ye-e-es?’

‘Oh, dear, had you forgotten? I know we’ve messed you about so much, but we’ve just decided that we’ll have to make it the weekend following after all. That’s Easter, we thought we’d go down on Saturday and stay till Monday night. Will you be free? We can always defer it again if you’re not but it would be nice if you were.’

‘I’m not quite sure, I’ll have to ask Jonathan.’

‘Oh, of course. Could you ask him now so that we can settle it?’

‘That’s a bit tricky. He isn’t here.’

‘Not there? Well, ask him as soon as he comes in and ring me back.’

‘I’m not sure…I’m not quite sure when he’s going to be back, he may be rather late.’

‘Goodness, has he gone away without you?’

‘More or less.’

‘Darling, you do sound odd. Is anything wrong?’

‘Not really.’

‘Darling, you sound as if you might be about to cry. Do tell me what has happened.’

‘I can’t.’

She
was
about to cry. She had thought her tears were all shed. She had assured herself that once the ironing was done, and the evening had fallen, and Jonathan had returned, and she and he had talked, properly talked, to each other, everything would be normal again. Normal and nice. They would be a normal, nice couple again, and could make amicable arrangements again, and accept amicable invitations, as normal, like this one, from Lizzie and Alfred Ainsworth, to spend a weekend at their cottage (their poky little cottage where Jonathan kept banging his head and their little vixen of a daughter woke them up at five in the morning: but still. The scenery was divine).

She was on the verge of tears, as long as she tried to speak, because underneath her assurance that everything would (in just a few hours’ time) return to niceness and normality was the black dread that it never would, and never could. No matter how beautifully she might iron Jonathan’s shirts.

‘Oh, Nicola, I don’t like the sound of this. Listen, I’m going to come round, I have to fetch Henrietta from Battersea later on anyway. So you stay just where you are, I’m going to go straight out and get into the car and whizz straight round. I’ll be with you before you know it.’ And Lizzie hung up, just like that.

Nicola flopped down onto the sofa and began to cry. She had a good fifteen minutes to shed her tears and dry them too, because Lizzie was coming all the way from Islington. Lizzie was one of those women who like to be at the scene.

But her tears did not last so long this time as they had before. If I can manage to finish ironing that shirt that I’d just started, she thought, looking across the room at the ironing board, by the time Lizzie gets here then that will mean that everything is going to be all right: and she went back to the ironing board, and ironed as quickly as she knew how; but it won’t count, she admonished herself, if I don’t do it properly. No skimping. And she was as careful as ever with the sleeves, the really awkward part. She finished a moment before the buzzer sounded, heralding Lizzie. Everything was going to be all right.

15

‘Oh, Lizzie.’

‘Oh, Nicola. Now what
is
all this about?’

‘It’s nothing really. You shouldn’t have come.’

‘I like that. Shall I go away again then?’

‘No, stay and have some tea anyway.’

‘All right. Goodness, how clean and tidy it looks here.’

‘Well, there’s the ironing—sorry about that, I’d just started—’

‘Goodness. Ironing as well. You are a treasure. I hope Jonathan’s grateful. His shirts, I see.’

‘Yes.’

‘Lucky Jonathan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Nicola, do look at your face—oh—oh dear—oh, you
are
going to cry. Oh, Lord. Here, have you got a hanky? Oh dear. Poor Nicola. Now for heaven’s sake, darling, do tell Lizzie. What
is
the matter?’

‘You’re really the last person I should be telling,’ said Nicola, between sobs. ‘Jonathan would
kill
me.’

‘Oh, would he
just
. Never mind him for the moment. Just
tell
me.’

It was dicey, all right. Susannah and Geoffrey were hers, but Alfred and Lizzie were Jonathan’s. Well, Alfred, at any rate: he and Jonathan had known each other since school. On the other hand, Nicola having made their acquaintance had become rather more of an intimate of Lizzie’s than Jonathan was of Alfred’s. But women were like that, as Alfred had remarked to himself—always getting together in corners and bonding: the phenomenon was clearly of evolutionary utility. He was quite content to leave them to it, as long as they weren’t evidently hatching anything significant. Alfred loved women, in their place, and was at all times ready to assert that some of his female colleagues—he being at the bar—were very able indeed:
very
. Lizzie, of course, was not and never had been a colleague:
perish
the thought!

‘Just let me make this tea first.’

Nicola went into the kitchen and made the tea and brought it into the sitting room. Lizzie was looking at the china dogs.

She picked up a pug. ‘Is this Staffordshire?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly,’ said Nicola. ‘It’s a proper eighteenth-century one. Derby. Jonathan gave it to me.’

‘Don’t cry again.’

‘No, I won’t.’

She poured out the tea.

‘Jonathan,’ she said, ‘wants us to split up. He’s offered to buy me out.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘I’ve no idea. None at all. He just announced it, out of the blue, on Thursday night. Then he went to his parents’ for the weekend, straight from work on Friday. So I haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly. I mean, he wouldn’t discuss it on Thursday night. He just made his announcement and then clammed up. I was completely gobsmacked. I still am.’

‘So am I.’

And she was. They each drank some tea and Nicola began to eat a biscuit.

‘And you really had no warning—no sign—beforehand?’ asked Lizzie.

‘No. Well, for all I know there were signs which I was too thick to see, but—’

‘Tell me again exactly what he said and how.’

Nicola obliged.

‘Well,’ said Lizzie, ‘I must say that’s quite the creepiest thing I’ve heard of in a long while. He should be strung up. It’s an absolute outrage. And here you are, ironing his shirts! Nicola! What on
earth
are you thinking of?’

‘Oh,’ cried Nicola rather wildly, ‘don’t—don’t be too hard on him—I don’t know—we don’t know—the whole story; he may be entirely justified—it’s probably my fault completely—I just don’t know, yet.’

‘Only because he won’t tell you. The pig, the pig, the absolute
pig
. Your fault! My God, that creep of a Jonathan should go down on his bended knees to you every day of his life—you should have seen the state he was in before he met you! You’re the best thing that ever happened to him, and he doesn’t deserve you, not for five seconds. You’re well rid of him. He can go right back to where he was, and good riddance. Mournful putrid boring old Jonathan— he’s had his last invitation to
my
house, if Alf wants to see him he can have lunch with him,
I’m
not having him about the place. These old bachelors,
really
! Useless! My God!
Men!
’

Nicola had begun to laugh: and then she began to cry, as well: and then she was crying, as if her heart might break, and not laughing at all.

‘Oh, Nicola,’ said Lizzie, patting her shoulder; ‘he isn’t worth it; he can’t be; a man who can behave like that just isn’t worth it. A man who makes you cry so is never worth your tears.’

‘But I love him,’ said Nicola. ‘That’s the trouble, you see. I really do love him.’

‘You couldn’t have found anyone less deserving,’ said Lizzie.

‘I didn’t really try,’ said Nicola; and in the midst of her tears she and Lizzie began to laugh.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lizzie; ‘I mean,
Christ
.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘You never said a truer word.’