The Lake of Darkness (17 page)

Martin had got into the habit of ringing the shop every morning at ten. At two minutes to ten on Wednesday he phoned, sounding excited, and said he had had a wonderful idea which he would tell her about that night. Francesca went into the room at the back and tried on the burgundy crepe which Kate had brought in with her and got Kate to agree to take twenty-three pounds fifty for it.

It started to snow at about five, great flakes like goose feathers. Kate always went home at half-past because she didn’t have a day off or Saturday afternoon. Martin gasped at the sight of Francesca in the dark red dress with her hair piled up and a dark red-and-white speckled orchid tucked into a curl. He stared at her adoringly. These transports of his, though she knew they were sincere, always irritated Francesca. She preferred a lecherous reaction, which was what she had had from Russell Brown and those other men who had preceded Tim and which she had, in his own individual way, most satisfactorily from Tim. But she smiled and looked rather shy and said quietly,

“Do I look nice?”

“Francesca, you look so beautiful. I don’t know what to say. I wish I was more articulate; I should like to write poems to you.”

“I just hope I’m going to be warm enough,” said Francesca, her mind on mink coats, but Martin assured her she would be exposed to the open air for no longer than it took to cross the pavement. “So what’s this wonderful idea?” she said when they were in the car. Martin said he wasn’t going to tell her until they were eating their dinner.

Francesca had an enormous appetite and a hearty capacity for alcohol. She and Tim were both the sort of very thin people who can eat as much as they like without putting on
weight. But she never ate and drank anywhere near as much as she wanted when with Martin, it didn’t fit the image. Tonight, however, she was going to start off with
quenelles
of lobster,
quenelles
of anything being among her favourite food. To precede it, a brandy and soda would have gone down well. Francesca asked for a dry sherry.

Martin’s shyness and awkwardness increased during the meal. He had become almost tonguetied by the time Francesca started on her roast pheasant, and although this suited her well enough, she couldn’t help speculating as to what it might be about the wonderful idea that was so inhibiting. Then, suddenly, like a man confessing a sin that has long been on his conscience, he began. Fascinated, she watched the slow process of the blush spreading across his face.

“I haven’t told anyone this except my parents. In November I won a hundred and four thousand pounds on the football pools. No, don’t say anything, let me finish. I decided I’d, keep half and give half away: You can imagine my reasons for wanting to do that.”

Francesca couldn’t at all, but she said nothing. She felt a curious breathless excitement as if she were on the brink of enormous revelations. Yet he was only confirming what Tim had said all along.

“You see, I felt grateful to-well, to fate or God or something for having had such a fortunate sort of life. I made up my mind to help people who were having housing difficulties, but I haven’t got very far with that. It’s much harder than you’d, suppose to get people to accept money. All I’ve managed to do so far really is pay for a boy to have a heart operation.”

“That’s not housing difficulties,” said Francesca.

“No, that was to be the one exception. Apart from that, I’m considering my cleaner’s sister-in-law who’s having a nervous breakdown because of noise in the place where she lives, and I’ve managed to get a young couple on very low wages to accept a loan.”

He was smiling tentatively at her, leaning forward, waiting for her approval. Francesca looked blankly at him. It occurred to her that he might actually be off his head. But, no, he was just innocent, he didn’t know he was born … Suppose she were to throw herself on his mercy, tell him who she was and that Tim was her lover and Lindsay’s father and that they were doomed to live in worse conditions than maybe any of those people he had talked about? She couldn’t do it. It was impossible. He refilled her wine glass and said,

“So now I’ve told you. I don’t want to have any secrets from you.” As if he’d, just confessed to some weird perversion, thought Francesca. “But the point of telling-well, I’ve been a complete fool. I’ve been worrying about buying homes for other people and worrying about where you were going to live when you left Russell, but it never occurred to me till last night that I don’t have to sell my flat or get a mortgage. Apart from what I’m going to give away, I’ve got fifty thousand of my own. I’ve got my own half-share of the win.”

“So what’s the wonderful idea?” said Francesca carefully.

“To buy a flat for you and Lindsay to live in.” He paused but she said nothing. “I mean, that solves everything, doesn’t it? Lindsay can have her own room, Russell can’t possibly accuse you of corrupting her, and after two years when you’ve got your divorce we can sell both flats and buy a house. How does that suit you? I’m not going to make any conditions, Francesca”-Martin smiled and reached across the table for her hand-“only I hope I can come and stay sometimes, and I’ll be the happiest man on earth if you’ll choose a flat that isn’t far from mine.”

“So we’re going house-hunting on Saturday. He’s out on Cloud Nine already, planning colour schemes and fussing about something called cubic footage.”

“Miss Urban was always house-proud. She’ll make some lucky chap a wonderful wife one of these days. What did you have to eat?”

“Lobster
quenelles
, roast pheasant, and roast potatoes and calabresse and
sauteed
mushrooms
and
asparagus, and a sort of chartreuse souffle with cream.”

“You should have asked for a paper bag and said you wanted to take some home for your aged relative.”

Francesca giggled. She sat on Tim’s lap and took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it in her own. “But, seriously, Tim, what’s the future in letting him buy a flat for me to live in? I shan’t live in it. But I can’t think of any way of getting out of it, short of flatly saying I won’t leave my husband.”

“Suppose I said give it just two weeks more? Just till Monday, the twelfth of Feb.? If he’s going to buy mah honey chile a love nest, he’s got to furnish it, hasn’t he? In these scandalous times five grand is the least, but the leastest, he can expect to spend on furnishings.”

“He said I could have the cane chairs out of his living room.”

“What a miscreant he is!” said Tim. “Still, you won’t stand for that, will you? Not a girl of spirit like you. You’ll ask for five thousand to splash about in Heal’.s”

“Oh dear,” said Francesca with an enormous yawn, “I’ll try, I’ll do my best, but not a minute more after Feb. the twelfth.”

Francesca didn’t know whether to fix on the first flat they saw so that she could go home early, or pretend to find nothing to please her so that things would have progressed no further by the time her deadline came. In the event, she did neither, for as soon as they were really doing something together, conducting practical business, Martin made clear his belief in man as the master. In this, as in all matters on a higher level than that of deciding what she should wear or perhaps what they should eat, he took it for granted he made the decisions, asking for her approval only as a matter of courtesy.

During the two days since their dinner at the Mirabelle he had been in touch with estate agents, had made himself familiar with the specifications of every flat for sale in the area of Highgate and Crouch End, and had already viewed several. This led to his making of a short list and from it a shorter list which by Saturday afternoon had fined down to one. The flat in question wasn’t quite as near Cromwell Court as he would have liked, but it was in other respects so suitable that he thought they must overlook that small defect.

Francesca hadn’t expected to react with either enthusiasm or dislike to the prospect before her. She had expected to be bored. Her feelings on entering the flat surprised her very much. She had never lived anywhere very spacious or elegant or even ordinarily attractive. There had been her parents’ mansion flat in Chiswick, big and cold and pervadingly dark brown, a furnished room in Pimlico, and a
furnished room in Shepherds Bush, the little house she had shared with Russell, the basement squat she had shared with Russell’s supplanter, her three rooms in Stroud Green. Home to Francesca had never been much more than a place to keep out the rain where there was a table to eat meals off and a bed to go to with someone she liked. But this was another thing. The fourth floor, the penthouse, of Swan Place, Stanhope Avenue, Highgate, was a different matter altogether.

The living room was very large and you went into the dining part of it through an arch. One wall was all glass. The heating made it too hot for even her thin coat; she could have gone naked. Looking out of the big plate-glass windows on to hilly streets and patches of green and snowy roofs, being led into the pastel blue kitchen and the pastel apricot bathroom, Francesca found herself thinking that she would like to live here, she would like it very much indeed. It was a crying shame that she couldn’t, or that the price to pay for doing so was too high, because she would like it-oh, wouldn’t she! And Lindsay would like it and probably Tim too, though you could never tell with him. It was just too awful that she could have it only by being stuffy old Martin’s kept woman. She wondered how much it cost.

“What do you think?” said Martin in the car.

“It’s lovely.”

“I’m glad you like it, darling, because although you’ll think me very high-handed and a real male chauvinist pig, I’ve actually already told the agent I’ll have it and I’ve put down a deposit.”

“What would you have done,” asked Francesca curiously, “if I’d hated it?”

“I knew you wouldn’t. I think I know you pretty well by this time.”

“How much is it, Martin?”

“Forty-two thousand pounds.”

Francesca was silenced. She felt quite weak and swimmy in the head at the thought of so much money. Martin said it would be a good investment, house property was the best investment these days, and before they got married he would sell both flats and buy a house. The property market, he had been told, was due for another steep rise in the spring. With luck he ought to make a big profit on both flats.

They went back to Cromwell Court where Martin had got chocolate eclairs and a Battenburg cake in for tea. Francesca partook heartily of both. It was the most miserable shame she didn’t find Martin in the least attractive. If only she fancied him she could have put up with the yawning dullness and the accountant’s talk and the pomposity for the sake of that lovely flat. But she didn’t fancy him, not a scrap, which was odd really because, like Tim, he was tall and dark and though not so good looking, he was younger and cleaner and he didn’t permanently stink of Gauloises. Francesca pondered rather regretfully on the anomalies of sexual attraction while Martin lectured her gently on house property and the registration of land and stamp duty and the making of searches and the mysteries of conveyancing.

Francesca ate another chocolate eclair. Martin wasn’t the sort of person who would even consider going to bed in the afternoon, he would think it perverse. She let him hold her hand across the spread of sofa cushions.

“I suppose it’ll be months and months before you actually own it?” she said.

“Oh, no. I’m paying cash, you see. My friend, Norman Tremlett-you met him here-he’ll do a survey for me on Monday. I’ve already talked to my solicitor-he’s another friend, we were all at school together-and he says, provided the survey’s favourable there’s no reason why the contract shouldn’t be ready for my signature by February the twelfth, that’s Monday week. Then I’d, get completion
as soon as possible, maybe three weeks, and you could move in.”

Francesca thought how when she and Russell had tried to buy a house, what difficulties and obstacles there had been! The first two they fixed on had been sold over their heads while the building society hesitated over giving Russell a mortgage. Securing the one they had finally lived in took months and months, nearly a year of their hopes being raised and dashed. But they, of course, had had no money and no old-boy network. It no longer mattered, it was history, ten years gone, swept away by oceans of water under the bridge. She smiled at Martin.

“What about furniture, darling?”

“I thought of making a separate deal with the owner for the carpets and curtains and the bedroom furniture and the fridge and cooker. He wants to sell. Of course, if there was anything special you wanted, we could go shopping together next Saturday.”

Was there any point now in waiting till February 12? None except that she had given Tim an undertaking. Martin seemed to take it for granted that she would now be spending every evening with him. Francesca pointed out that while she was still with Russell she couldn’t go out every night and leave him to look after Lindsay. Perhaps she might manage another day in the week as well as Monday …

“I want my parents to meet you,” said Martin.

She insisted on going home at six o’clock and he insisted on driving her. This time he didn’t drop her a hundred yards away but set her down outside number 54 and there he waited to see her into the house. Francesca stood outside the white iron gate, waving impatiently at him, while he sat in the car, refusing to go till she did. After a few seconds she saw it was useless. She must either make it look as if she were going into that house or else give up the game.

There was a light on in the hall but nowhere else. She
unlatched the white gate and walked quickly to the side entrance which was a wooden door set into a six-foot-high fence. It was rather more than dusk and not quite dark. Francesca boldly tried the handle on the wooden door, and when it worked pushed the door open and found herself on a concrete strip of back yard. It would be rather awful, she thought, but rather funny too if someone saw her lurking there and called the police. After a little while she heard Martin’s car go, so she opened the wooden door again and got out as fast as she could, running away down the side street on to which the garden of 54 abutted.