A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (9 page)

He began to laugh, it seemed for the first time in weeks. ‘Dear Monica.’ He felt very fond of her and hoped very much that Harry would make her happy.

Sarah said, ‘Yes, isn’t she fantastic? She simply couldn’t have done more to help me.’

Manson said, ‘Well, she’s succeeded. I think you’ve made a very good start.’

‘There’s just one thing. Do you think you—I mean everyone—could call me Sarah, instead of Miss Francis? Only I got so used to it at Farrer’s and I think I’d feel less of a new girl if you could.’

He said, ‘I should think we could manage that. After all you work as if you’d been here for years.’

She smiled. ‘Thank you.’

He wandered along to Rupert’s office at coffee time. Rupert was fixing his current motto for the week on the pin board above his desk. This one read “Thought costs nothing and is instantly eradicable.” Manson stood in the doorway regarding it.

‘Prue,’ he said. ‘Very true.’

‘Well, someone has to state the obvious occasionally,’ said Rupert, ‘and it may as well be me.’ He jabbed in the last drawing-pin and stood back to admire the effect. ‘How’s your Miss Thing, why aren’t you having coffee with her?’

‘I came to see you.’ Manson installed himself in Rupert’s chair. ‘And she’s not Miss Thing any more. As of now, we are all formally requested to call her Sarah.’

‘Are we indeed?’ Rupert made a whistling sound through his teeth. ‘Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? Nice little thing. Not very like our beloved Monica, though, is she?
Quite
a different kettle of fish. She’s got the whole office eyeing you with ill-concealed envy at last.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Manson uneasily, and went on to tell Rupert his entry on Monica’s information sheet.

‘Bless her,’ said Rupert, pleased, ‘I could hardly have done better myself. She was a dear child. I hope Whatsisname will gratify her every whim. But I can’t say I’m sorry she’s gone. Miss Thing is so much prettier and she seems just as efficient. I’m told she’s arrived early every morning so far, and hasn’t cheated on her lunch hour once, as yet.’

‘You’re told?’

‘Oh, my spies are out, you know,’ said Rupert airily. ‘I have my sources. But like most of their kind they wish to remain undisclosed. How’s Prue?’

‘Quite well,’ said Manson shortly. ‘I haven’t seen her lately; they’re both working now that term’s over, and next month they’re off to the South of France.’

Rupert sighed. ‘What it is to be an impoverished student. I suppose they get all kinds of ridiculous concessions. No currency
crise
for them. Ah well. The penalties of success. The moment you pass an exam in this country or win a prize or earn some money, you’re victimised. I sometimes think that if our dearly beloved government that
some
of us were misguided enough to vote for doesn’t move over soon and let us breathe just a
little
fresh air, I for one will have to find a bolt-hole somewhere else.’

They discussed politics with idle enthusiasm for some time. Rupert was fond of baiting Manson for his share of the responsibility for the mess they were now all in. ‘It’s people like you who put them there,’ he would say. ‘Lucky for you that
we
are merciful. The penalty for treason is normally death, after all.’ When Manson went back to his desk he felt restless. He applied himself to a backlog of paper work, but his heart wasn’t in it and he was conscious all the time of a nagging desire to telephone Prue. He stuck it out till lunch time, then went to his club, a place he liked to maintain, for no particular reason, and then forgot to visit for long periods of time. Today he found it restful and soothing: the older members made him feel young again by contrast, and the leather-mahogany atmosphere created the illusion of a time when the generation gap either did not exist or was firmly ignored. He did not telephone from there.

But how was she? Had she specially given Cassie her office number so that he
could
telephone? It was impossible now to get her at home without Gavin being there too. Did she
want
him to phone? Why had she not contacted him since that weekend? What if she actually
went away
without contacting him?

It was this final thought that made him act. At tea time, after Sarah had brought in his cup, he dialled the number and asked for Prue’s extension. He could not bring himself to get Sarah to do it. Prue came on the line sounding very cool and brisk.

‘Hullo, yes?’

He said, ‘Hullo, stranger.’

There was a pause, of the peculiarly intense variety that only the telephone can produce.

‘Oh, Daddy. It’s you.’

‘Yes.’

She permitted another silence. He could not think how to go on. He said foolishly, ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine.’

‘Good.’

‘And you?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m quite well.’

‘Oh, good.’ Yet another pause. Then: ‘Look, Daddy, I am awfully busy and they don’t really like me to have calls here ..’

Somehow this made him find words. ‘Prue, what are we fighting about?’

A very cold little voice. ‘We’re not.’

‘Yes, we are. Are you still sulking about the weekend?’ He noticed he had chosen a word to suggest her behaviour was childish and she picked it up at once.

‘I’m not sulking. I think you were very nasty to Gavin, that’s all, and I’m upset. It hurt me very much that you wouldn’t meet him half-way.’

He noticed that she was using equally loaded words to suggest that he was completely in the wrong. ‘I see,’ he said evenly, considering his next move.

Lack of retaliation made Prue gather strength. ‘I was very disappointed. I thought he was trying so hard that you’d be sure to respond.’

‘It’s no good, Prue,’ he said, stung. ‘You get your own way more than most people but even you can’t expect to win one hundred per cent.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about. Look, I’ll have to go. I can’t talk any more now.’

He said goodbye wearily, with a sense of defeat, to the purring receiver. Prue had already rung off.

Sarah came in with some letters for him to sign. ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘you’re a young girl. What makes a young girl of nineteen want to get married and have a baby before she’s even finished her education?’ He went on signing the letters without looking up.

‘I can’t imagine.’ She did not sound surprised at the question. ‘But then I’m not sure I shall ever want to.’

‘Oh. Why is that?’ Careful, now; it was early days to get personal. The relationship with Monica which had worked so well had been built up very slowly. But today he felt vulnerable and in need of comfort.

‘Well, I’m very independent. And there are so many other things I want to do.’

‘Such as?’ He glanced up briefly from the letters and found her watching him, seriously, thoughtfully, almost with sympathy. She might not have been talking about herself at all. The eyes that he had found merely dark turned out to be grey like slate, like city roof-tops, edged with thick, dark-pointed lashes, and shadowed and outlined in the manner of the day. They dwarfed the rest of her face, making it seem more bony and fragile than ever: they were like two huge flowers with drooping petals. He wondered how they looked without make-up.

Good God, he thought, what’s the matter with me?

Sarah said, ‘I’d like to travel and meet people. Just see the
world and try lots of different things.’ He wondered if she meant men. She added, neither proudly nor apologetically, ‘I think I have a horror of settling down. My sister married young—well, she was seventeen and she’s only twenty-four now. She has three kids and she’s bored to death. There’s nothing wrong with her husband but everything’s
fixed
. Do you know what I mean?’

He said, ‘Yes. I do.’

She held out her hand for the letters. A small, square hand, with short nails, shiny but not coloured. A practical hand. ‘Thank you.’

He said, without meaning to, ‘I was talking about my daughter.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you guess?’

‘No.’

‘I’m very worried about her.’

‘I’m sorry.’

This exchange, though on the surface casual and meaningless, seemed very important to him. He went on, ‘I think she’s ruined her life.’ Sarah said nothing; she just stood there holding the signed letters. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s very hard to bear when you’re a parent.’

Sarah said unexpectedly, ‘Perhaps she can get a divorce later on.’ He must have shown his surprise at this for she added, ‘Don’t be shocked, I don’t mean to sound cynical. Only my parents did that and they’ve both been much happier since.’

‘Pull up a chair and tell me about it.’

She glanced at her watch.

‘Never mind the time. Perhaps Monica forgot to include cheering me up among your many duties.’

She laughed and sat down. ‘Well, it was very simple really. They waited till we were grown up, which I call a mistake but it made them feel better, then they simply split up.
They’d never liked domesticity, you see. My mother went off and married a very rich man and she travels everywhere with him and has a lovely time, and my father has turned into a sort of elderly beatnik and just drifts around doing odd jobs and drinking and smoking pot. They’re both much happier. When you meet them now you can’t imagine how they ever lived together for a day let alone twenty years.’

Manson said grimly, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if my daughter and her husband are smoking pot already.’ He had no reason to suppose so, but it went with the general image, he thought bitterly.

Sarah said, ‘I shouldn’t worry. They probably aren’t, and anyway some people think it’s harmless.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well, I don’t know, I’ve never tried it.’ She smiled. ‘I’m a bit square, you see, I prefer alcohol. I should think it’s safer than nicotine, if it doesn’t lead to anything else. But then I don’t smoke at all so I can afford to be smug.’

How assured they all were: Prue at nineteen, Sarah at twenty-three, the unidentified masses he saw in the street, in the park, on the train. He remembered himself at their age, all hands and feet and blushes and spots, with a way of being rude when he most wished to impress, out of sheer terror.

‘Yours is a very confident generation, isn’t it?’ he said to her.

‘Is it?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I can’t really judge.’

‘No, of course not. Tell me, when you’re with your parents, do you feel very conscious of the generation gap? Is there a gulf between you?’

She hesitated; he could see her thinking. ‘Well, there always was, actually. I mean we never really had much in common. I think they got on better with Barbara. But—it’s probably better now, now they’re divorced. I don’t see them so often and they don’t have the same jurisdiction—you know?’

‘In other words they don’t interfere.’

‘Well, they never did, much, to be fair to them.’

‘But now they don’t even get the chance. Is that what you mean?’ He was thinking of Prue. What chance did he have to influence her life?

‘I suppose so. But it’s more than that. They’re more—just people. They don’t have to worry about appearances.’ She smiled ironically. ‘I mean they’re not worried about the parent image any more. That all stopped when they got divorced.’

‘So divorce paves the way to happy parenthood.’

‘No. But it does cut out a lot of—what shall I call it?—role-playing, and there’s quite enough of that going on as it is.’

He was interested; she spoke so feelingly while trying to sound detached. It was the first glimpse he had had of a possibly real person beneath the secretarial facade. Intrigued, he asked, ‘How do you mean exactly? Give me an example.’

‘Well.’ She was concentrating; she seemed to have forgotten about the office relationship. ‘I suppose it’s unavoidable really. If—well, if I have two boy friends, say, for the sake of argument, and one is very kind and reliable and the other is rather erratic but exciting, I’ll put up with much worse treatment from him than the first one because it’s in character. It’s part of his role to behave like that. But if the first one steps out of line I probably won’t put up with it. I’ll react quite differently to the same behaviour from two people, which is illogical, and it’s all because of what I
expect
from each of them. I’ve given them each a role to play, or they’ve chosen their own, and I expect them to stick to that image.’

Manson said, ‘And what role do you choose for yourself?’

‘Well, that all depends who I’m with.’

‘So you have no central persona at all.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I mean is there a real Sarah Francis or just a series of roles?’

‘Yes, I know what you mean but I can’t answer you. Sometimes I think there isn’t a real me at all, and other times I’m sure there is, only it’s right in the middle and terribly small, like a walnut, and I can’t get at it. So I don’t really know if it’s there or not.’

He smiled. ‘That’s a good description.’

She smiled back. ‘English was always my best subject.’

‘Thank you for cheering me up.’

She took this as a departure signal and stood up at once. ‘Did I really? It was a pleasure. You know, I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Things have a habit of working out.’

‘I rather doubt that.’

‘Do you?’ She looked surprised. ‘I take it for granted.’

Manson smiled. ‘If you and I were both looking at a bottle that was neither full nor empty, you’d call it half-f and I’d call it half-empty.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re an optimist and I’m a pessimist, that’s all.’

T
HE BOYS
came home from school and the house reverberated with them. Manson loved their noise: he felt it might have a healing effect, just as fire can cauterise a wound. He looked at them playing, and shouting, and eating, and consciously forced himself to think, over and over again, these are my sons. After all, Cassie had reminded him that he did have other children, and he loved them. But he did not see them as vulnerable; they did not tug at his heart in the half-sick, half-enchanted way that he welcomed and dreaded. The spell of the first-born remained, as potent as ever.