A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (24 page)

In the afternoon flowers arrived, roses, with his name on the card. She was thrilled as she unwrapped them, she felt special, but at the same time there was a shaft of panic, a sense of ownership. She had been labelled. His secretary, his mistress, in his flat, receiving his flowers. She felt he had invaded her. Suddenly frantic, she rushed to the window to see the car far below where she had parked it in the tree-lined
street. There seemed no problem attached to it. A simple loan, an act of friendship, fun. Geoff had not put his brand on her; he never would. Nor Simon, drifting easily round Europe, raising his thumb at passing cars. They were her brothers, providing sex and jokes, comfort and freedom.

She cried a little. And told herself it was only the anticlimax, the aftermath of moving. Someone should have been coming for a drink, to admire the flat (if it had been really hers), to take her out. But there was no one to come. Even a girl friend, to watch television, which he had thoughtfully installed. She switched it on and stood looking at it, thinking, My God, this is Saturday night. What a popular girl I must be. She could not remember when last she had spent such a fruitless evening. But she could not even summon up the energy to go out to a film. She ate some cheese and watched television and thought vaguely about washing her hair.

About nine he phoned from a call-box. She shook at the sound of his voice, which seemed an incongruous reaction in view of her earlier chilly resentment. He asked if she had got his flowers and she enthused, but guiltily, wishing she had mentioned them first. His voice and her shaking had distracted her. She wanted to say that, in case he was disappointed, but did not think it would sound convincing. Although it was true there seemed to be an artificiality about it. She asked instead how he had managed to get out to phone her, which she at once thought was quite the wrong thing to ask, and he said he had gone out for cigarettes. He sounded reluctant to give her the information. She thought desperately that the flat had made them both self-conscious, aware of the need for gestures, like flowers and phone calls, and she wanted him to be with her so she could reassure him that these things were not necessary. She said she wished he was there and he took this to mean desire and his voice became more cheerful and he said so did he, but perhaps they could lunch at the flat on Monday. She liked the use of
the word lunch. But the image of him leaving the call-box and going home for the rest of the week-end disturbed her, not so much because it was apart from her as because it seemed unglamorous. Just like her image of herself shut in her new flat all weekend, admiring the roses and waiting for her lover to phone. Both seemed such old-fashioned things for them to be doing. She became frightened. Was it all slipping through their fingers, and at what a moment, when he had just signed a lease? What could they do to preserve it? But they should not
have
to do anything. She felt that they had made some fatal error somewhere, for which they were now paying, but which they were not allowed to correct. She said a lot of nice things to him, quickly, to counteract this impression, and when she was sure that he sounded happier she asked what he was doing on Sunday, tomorrow, so she could think of him doing it. He said Prue and Gavin were coming to lunch to show off their suntan. It was also Prue’s birthday and he had bought the gold bracelet they had once discussed, did she remember? Meanwhile, he missed her, and wished he had bought the gold bracelet for her instead, because there was no fun in it as it was, he did not know why.

C
ASSIE WAS
happy. Not content, not run of the mill happy, but mindlessly euphoric. It was years since the prospect of a holiday had affected her so, and she wondered why. She was tired from Devon, from anxiety and nursing, yes; it was also the year in which concern over Prue had taken priority over all else. But it was still more than all that. She felt that they had passed some dangerous corner, narrowly averted catastrophe, faced some unnamed peril, and now it was over. She deserved a holiday.
They
deserved a holiday. Over the last few weeks she had sensed Manson coming gradually to terms with Prue and the situation: he was closer now, she thought, than he had ever been to acceptance. Their family life was nearly restored to normal, and this mattered more to her than anything, since there was nothing else to matter. And now she wanted to be creative about it; she was tired of being helpless. She wanted to put the final gloss on it, as if icing a cake, to restore it to all its former splendour, and she did not know how to do it other than by creating a loving atmosphere, making the house warm, cooking delicious food, and filling the rooms with flowers.

She admired Prue’s present and wrapped it carefully, asking him to write the card, but he said, ‘No, you do it,’ in a casual tone that gladdened her heart and also made her feel guilty. (Was it possible she had actually been resentful—jealous—of her own daughter?) So she wrote ‘Happy Birthday, darling, with all our love, Daddy and Mummy,’ and
smiled at Manson, feeling secure and loved. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, with an overspill of generosity. ‘She’ll adore it.’ He smiled absently. ‘It’s pretty,’ he said. ‘And it certainly cost enough.’

‘Cynic.’ She tied red ribbon round the box, as much to amuse herself as to do the thing properly. She felt festive. (Why not holiday decorations, as well as Christmas? She could have festooned the house with garlands and tinsel and brightly coloured paper, and instead of Happy Christmas a message announcing ‘We are going away.’) The holiday—this holiday—seemed to belong to her, just as Prue’s baby belonged to Prue, and she hugged it to herself in the same way. She could not even speak about it much. Once he agreed to go, once he actually said, ‘All right, we’ll go to Scotland at the end of the month,’ she became almost totally silent on the subject. It was too exciting. She would be childish if she spoke about it. Or it would go wrong. As a child she had never spoken about things that mattered to her. It was too dangerous: if you put your feelings into words people could injure them. The things she loved had been physically hidden, too, in drawers, cupboards, envelopes, to spare them damage from parents, brothers, dailies, dogs, even from the air itself, from contact with something as insubstantial as reality. She did not know what she meant by that, but she knew it was dangerous. The times she felt closest to Prue were when she detected the same emotional reticence, the same instinct for privacy and secrecy, in her.

They were coming for lunch and staying to dinner, an entire day of birthday celebrations. She said, ‘Will you meet them or shall I? Only I do have a lot to do in the kitchen.’ She was doing complicated things with fish for lunch, and roasting a duck for dinner, because Prue loved duck, reversing the traditional Sunday order. She had made Quiche Lorraine and lemon meringue pie and a huge birthday cake, and
was experiencing a warm, all-pervasive glow only slightly inferior to the aftermath of orgasm.

‘Yes, I’ll fetch them. Do we know which train they’re getting?’

‘No. They said they’d phone from the station.’

‘Here or there?’

‘Here. Victoria’s impossible; all the boxes are either full or broken.’

He considered this. ‘Well, it’s twelve already,’ he said, and poured them both a glass of sherry. Cassie looked out on the lawn. It was a bright, crisp day, curling at the edges, turning into autumn before her eyes. She said lightly, ‘What a pity we can’t have fireworks.’

He looked amazed, then smiled at her indulgently. She thought he was being very gentle and tolerant these days. ‘For Prue’s birthday,’ she explained. ‘It would be fun. Like a kind of royal salute. We should have thought of it before.’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s too late now.’

* * *

Prue sat in the train and put her feet up on the opposite seat. She felt that this must surely be against some dim regulation and so it gave her pleasure, and she gazed defiantly at passing porters, daring them to challenge her, protected as she was by pregnancy.

She felt huge, and
suddenly
huge, at that. As if someone had secretly doubled her load in the night and left her to get on with it. She remembered similar days before, when you became abruptly aware of your size and weight, as if you had not noticed it before, but this was the worst.

‘Only two months to go,’ she announced to Gavin, who grunted but did not reply. He had brought the Sunday paper with him and was reading it.

‘I feel enormous,’ she said more loudly. A man across the carriage sank deeper beneath his hat; a pink-faced woman
quivered. Gavin momentarily raised his eyes and gave her a fractional glance.

‘Yeah,’ he said briefly. ‘You look it.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Uh-huh.’

She stared at him coldly. He had not made love to her last night when she wanted him to, and that was rare. Nor this morning. Was she getting at last too fat, too unattractive?

‘You might at least give me the colour supplement,’ she said.

He did not look up. ‘I’m reading it.’

‘No, you’re not. That’s the review.’

Silently and, she thought, a trifle sullenly, he pulled out the magazine and tossed it onto the seat beside her. Just throwing it at me, she thought. As if I didn’t count at all. What’s the matter with him?

‘Thank you,’ she said pointedly, exaggeratedly polite.

‘You’re welcome.’

There was a feature on babies. Blue-veined embryos and shiny, blood-stained new-born. She felt sick and shut the magazine in a rush. It was too much. Didn’t she have enough to contend with, being so ugly and bloated, without looking at pictures like that? She did not want to think of her baby looking so messy, so sub-human, being dragged out of her. She knew enough facts of birth without having to study technicolor pictures. It was obscene. They were going to hurt her, and all to produce an object like that. It was unfair. It was out of all proportion.

She had never felt frightened before.

‘I feel sick.’

‘Uh-huh.’

She repeated more loudly, ‘I feel sick.’

‘No, you don’t, honey.’ Keeping his eyes on the paper. ‘You’re probably hungry.’

‘I tell you I feel sick.’ She raised her voice, noticing the
other passengers quivering with attention and gazing, steadfast and unconvincing, out of the windows. ‘Christ, I should know how I feel. What do
you
know about it?
I feel sick
. You don’t know what it’s like carrying this great lump around.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you should have been more careful.’ The ears of the woman across the aisle turned slowly pink.

‘Should I?’ Prue said, with all the venom she could muster. ‘Should I indeed? Well, I didn’t do it all by myself, now did I?’

‘No,’ he said equably, ‘but you were in charge, remember? And there’s no point feeling sick. This is a non-corridor train.’

She felt fury rising like bile in her throat. Perhaps she was going to be sick with sheer temper. ‘You think I feel sick for
fun?
You think I
want
to feel sick?’

‘You want attention,’ he said. ‘That’s all you ever want. And mostly you get it. But right now I’m reading the paper.’

Her stockinged feet were very close to him on the opposite seat: the temptation was too great. She kicked, catching him unawares, flipping the paper up towards his face with her toe. It was most effective. He looked surprised, annoyed, and … silly. Yes, she had actually made him look silly. She laughed. Gavin showed no emotion. He folded the paper into four and calmly hit her across the face with it. Prue let out a small, startled cry and the man across the aisle half rose from his seat, murmuring, ‘I say—’ while the woman quickly pretended to be asleep. Gavin snapped, ‘Keep out,’ and the man sank back at once as though attached to the seat by elastic that would only allow him to stretch so far. Film dialogue flashed through Prue’s mind (‘Keep out of this, stranger, if you know what’s good for you. This is between me and her’). Her heart was beating very fast and she felt slightly hysterical. She put her hands over her face and started to cry. Gavin unfolded the paper as if nothing had happened and
went on reading. The train pulled into a station and both their fellow-passengers got out, the woman staring straight ahead, the man with a backward glance of concern and distaste. No one else got in. Prue went on sobbing. Doors slammed and the train moved on.

‘Cut it out,’ said Gavin evenly, still reading. ‘You got what you wanted.’

* * *

Barbara inspected everything with an appraising eye, like a dealer. Sarah felt that she could price everything, both new and second-hand, to within a pound of its market value. ‘Not bad,’ she kept saying, ‘not bad. So you’re a kept woman at last. Good for you. That’s what I should have been before I got too run down. Who’d want me now?’

Sarah studied her sister. Peroxided hair, dark-rooted and without lustre. Bitten finger-nails, nicotine-stained. An old skirt and sweater, the wool tight-shrunken over her body, which now curved rather too much since the last child. Laddered tights, scuffed shoes, smeared lipstick and sooty eye make-up. Yet she remembered, and so could still see underneath, the trim, slick, smartly obvious go-getter of seven years ago. My sister. My favourite sparring-partner. My devoted, unconcerned, loving, hostile, down-at-heel, reliable, untrustworthy sister. And she pondered the peculiar quality of the love between them, for she could find no other name for it.

‘Presumably John still wants you,’ she said lightly.

Barbara lit a fresh cigarette from the one that was dying. ‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, ‘but who wants him? He’s not much of a catch, now is he?’

‘You thought so once.’ She did not mean to sound reproving, merely could not bear to believe that Barbara felt as sour as she sounded.

‘Yes, like I thought babies were fun and money was elastic’
She sighed. ‘Oh well. It’s up to you to retrieve the family fortunes. What’s he like?’

Sarah hesitated. ‘Nice.’

Barbara snorted. ‘Well, I gathered that. Married, of course.’

‘Yes.’

‘Kids?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re all alike.’