Golden Hour (22 page)

The words of an old song drift through her mind. “If you're going to San Francisco . . .” Old even when she was young, from the forgotten age of the hippies, though as a teenager she was just in time to wear the long floaty dresses bequeathed by the flower children of the Sixties. She remembers with a shock her first visit to Biba, which by then was in decline, but to her was a revelation of purple and emerald, of shadowy glamour, a promise of sensuality to come. Jewel-red ostrich feathers and jade-green tights, plum-colored eye-shadow in black pots. She wore her hair long and straight then, and floated about the store attracting glances, fully aware that her particular kind of
prettiness, her Pre-Raphaelite pallor, was perfectly suited to the Biba look.

How old was I then? Fourteen, almost fifteen. My skin was so perfect in those days, why on earth did I use make-up at all? Cosmetics are no more than a doomed attempt to recreate the sole ingredient of beauty, which is youth.

But don't ask me to be young again. I've not forgotten.

Laura shivers at this brush with a long-ago past, a time of almost unbearable anguish, though over what she can no longer recall. Simply being alive brought with it such exposure, as if she was forever being stripped, forever humiliated.

Not feathers. The standard fascinator is made of three or four brightly dyed feathers, and worn on one side of the head, making the wearer look like a tipsy cockatoo. But maybe a clip-on flower, a silk flower, not too big. She has one that's pale blue and very pretty, which would go with the dress she plans to wear, but she's not sure the spring is strong enough to keep it in place for several hours.

A glance at the clock tells her it's almost seven. Henry should be home in forty minutes or so. There are tomatoes and lettuce in the garden. What else? Hard-boil a few eggs, slice them up. Some tinned artichoke hearts. Some tinned tuna. Will that be enough?

Why can't I remember where I put Henry's proposal?

She touches her engagement ring, pressing the smooth hard ruby with one finger, as she often does. She's worn the ring so long it's become part of her. But that funny little pub napkin with its question and its answers and its ticked box she seems to have hidden away beyond memory, as if the very sight of it is an embarrassment.

So I had planned my answer before the question was asked.
What's so wrong with that? It was the right answer. Twenty-seven years, for Christ's sake.

She goes about preparing supper.

The right answer but, let's face it, the wrong process. Nowadays children are taught in school not just to give the solution to the problem but to show their workings. Laura remembers all too clearly the long secret conversations with herself in which she juggled and re-juggled the pros and cons of marrying Henry. Sometimes the balance tipped one way, sometimes the other. Charles Darwin did the same thing, unwisely committing his thoughts to paper.

Constant companion and friend in old age—object to be beloved and played with—better than a dog anyhow—but terrible loss of time—an infinity of trouble and expense in getting and furnishing a house—poor slave, you will be worse than a negro—Cheer up—One cannot live this solitary life, with groggy old age, friendless and cold and childless staring one in the face—Never mind, trust to chance—There is many a happy slave
.

There was a time when she knew it by heart, and used to recite it as a party trick. It always generated knowing looks among the laughter, but the assumption was that this was a male view of marriage. The woman was supposed to be sufficiently rewarded by the status granted by the man in marrying her. Or was supposed to be so in love that such calculations were beside the point.

A burst of laughter from Carrie on the terrace.

Why can't I talk to Carrie? Why don't we sit together in a dark bedroom and share secrets like other mothers and daughters? Carrie has always been self-contained, almost remote, even as a little child.

I still love you so much, darling. Maybe I don't understand you but it doesn't stop me loving you so much it hurts. I want you to be so happy. I want you to have the life you long for, whatever that is. I want you to be loved the way I love you, forever and ever. I don't mind that you're not like me. I don't mind that we don't talk. Well, I do, but it's okay. All I want is for you to know how much I love you.

She feels tears pricking at her eyes. Jesus, I am getting soft in my old age. Where did all that come from?

She pours herself a glass of wine and stands still for the first swallow so she can feel it going all the way down. Out on the terrace Toby has now got up off the teak table and is walking up and down, smoking, gesticulating with his arms. Carrie follows him with adoring eyes. The sun is behind cloud. Dull light over the Ouse valley.

Laura boils eggs, chops tomatoes, opens tins, mixes vinaigrette in a jam-jar. Then when as much is done as can be done she opens her lined pad and reviews the menu for Saturday evening. Such thinking can only be done before a meal, when hunger brightens the prospect of food.

She called on Richards the butcher earlier, and after some discussion accepted his professional advice that a leg of lamb would not feed eight, not in July. She has ordered a saddle of lamb, which Richards will bone and roll. A saddle is expensive but not ostentatious, in a way that a fillet of beef, say, is ostentatious. This is to be classic English cuisine: new potatoes, carrots, mint sauce, baby courgettes from the garden. Everything on the plate will be familiar to her guests, but the lamb will be pink and tender, the potatoes crisp, the carrots sweet. She will make the ordinary extraordinary.

She sees then that the sardine paté is not right. Better to make a taramasalata. Smoked cod roe, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice,
white bread soaked in milk. She can make it on Friday, serve it on slices of baguette oiled and crisped under the grill. Is a summer pudding too much after all this? There's always the anxiety of turning it out of the basin, you don't want it to disintegrate. The look is almost as important as the taste. But she's already bought the sliced white bread so it can be nicely stale by Friday.

Really a dinner party is like a military campaign. All the crucial decisions are taken in advance. When the signal is given to attack, all you can do is watch the battle unfold and pray you got it right.

No, battle is too aggressive. A drama, perhaps. The creation of a work of art.

She pulls a face as she frames this thought. And yet why not? All the attributes of the artist are on call here. She is making a tableau, a visual set piece, that is also a feast of the senses, and is also a play, complete with characters and plot. She will be aware throughout the evening of the tone of each player, and like a conductor of an orchestra she will exert herself to create harmony. If she's successful, by the end her guests will only be conscious that they've had a fine evening, not that they have performed in her work of art. Henry will say, “That was quite fun, really.” One or two of the guests will drop her a line of thanks. And the evening will fade into memory.

So you could say, why bother? Other people's works of art are displayed in galleries, or performed before audiences, or at the very least survive in print form, bound into volumes that stand on library shelves, waiting to be rediscovered. Her art leaves no trace behind. And yet this is the best of her, the art which calls upon all her skills. This is herself as she wishes to be known.

She glances again at the clock. Henry will be home any minute. Laura drinks her wine and lets her over-stimulated mind run
on. Behind all this, behind her irritation with Toby and her glorification of dinner parties, there lurks something that is deeper and darker. Jack is rarely home these days. Carrie will be gone soon. Her work, sporadic at the best of times, is unlikely to expand in this recessionary age. She's fifty-two years old and can reasonably expect another thirty years of active life. Thirty years! That's longer than her marriage, longer than her life as a mother. Thirty years doing what? Thirty years for what?

She thinks of her own parents. What do they do? They travel. They go to theater and opera. They see their friends. They read books. Their lives are not empty. But you'd be hard pressed to say their lives have a purpose.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe lives don't have purposes, they just happen, day by day. The trouble is, having children is so packed with purpose. Feeding them, clothing them, taking them to school, worrying about them when they get ill, rejoicing at their little triumphs, it's all so intense. You, their mother, are so necessary to every moment of their existence that you never have time to stop and ask yourself what your life is for. It's like a drug, being needed so much. You get addicted. And then it stops.

Carrie's still at home, of course, but she might as well not be. Her mind is somewhere else.

Darling, I know you're unhappy. I wish you'd talk to me. Don't let Toby hurt you. Don't smile so much for him. It'll make him think you want him too much and he'll run away.

She hears Henry's car pull up onto the gravel outside. She jumps up, going to the front door to meet him. Not something she usually does, but today's meeting was important.

He's frowning as he comes in. When she kisses him he hardly kisses her back. So it's not gone well.

“How was it?” she says.

“Oh, you know.” He drops his leather bag on the floor and kicks off his street shoes. “Pretty bloody.”

“Oh, darling. I'm sorry.”

“Likes the idea. Wants a hip young presenter to put it across.”

“But it's your idea!”

“Yes. Funny, that. I need a drink.”

She pours a glass of wine. He sees Carrie and Toby out on the terrace.

“Carrie seems to have perked up.”

Laura lowers her voice. “I just know Toby is going to mess her around. I can see it coming.”

“Nothing we can do.”

“No. I know. She wouldn't listen to me even if I told her.”

Henry drinks his wine quickly, in silence.

“So how did you leave it?” says Laura.

“I'm supposed to put together some kind of package. Get back to him. But that's just window dressing.” He looks up from his empty glass and meets Laura's gaze with his sad and weary eyes. “It's not going to happen.”

She doesn't tell him it will happen. This is no time for a call to arms. That can come later. Right now, as she knows all too well, what he needs is to have his hurt acknowledged.

“After all your work.”

“All pissed away in half an hour. I know I'm onto something with this, and Justin knows it too, in some corner of his dim little brain. But it's no good. I'm just too old.”

She takes his free hand in hers and strokes it. She doesn't say no, you're not old, your best work is still to come, even though she does believe that. He is the hurt child right now. This isn't a problem looking for a solution. This is a frightened creature crying out for kindness.

“I do love you so much, Henry.”

As she says it she feels it with a force that surprises even her. She knows him so well, she admires him, she believes in him. But more than all of this, she is bound to him. Whatever is his fate will be hers too.

For now what he needs is distraction, and food, and the passing of time.

“Supper's ready,” she says.

She opens the back door to the terrace and catches a peal of Carrie's nervous laughter.

“Supper!”

Toby claps his hands, applauding her.

“There's your answer,” Toby says to Carrie. “The solution to all the problems of life. Supper!”

Henry looks through the open door at them.

“God help me,” he says. “I never thought I'd want to be young again.”

“This is priceless, Roddy. Listen to this.” Diana has the morning copy of
The Times
, as is her way. She likes to share whatever catches her attention, unaware that other people might have other concerns. “This man actually murdered his wife over a game of bridge. He called her the C-word and said he'd throw her off the balcony, then he stabbed her a hundred times with an eight-inch knife.”

Diana is enchanted by the story. Roddy listens, drinking his morning coffee in silence. He wonders exactly what aspect of the story it is that so delights his wife.

She relishes every detail.

“He's fifty-two. She was fifty-seven. He drank heavily, then criticized the way she played bridge. This is heaven.”

Roddy no longer makes any effort to control her. But he can't resist a low bleat of protest.

“Bit of a sad story, I'd say.”

“Sad? Roddy, these people played bridge in
Lytham St. Annes
! Have you ever been there? It's even worse than Hove. Nothing but retired Tories bitching about benefits scroungers.”

She reads on.

“She didn't want a divorce. She wanted her old Stephen back, the Stephen that was not violent or drunk. She loved him even after what had happened.”

“What, after he stabbed her to death?”

“I imagine not, Roddy. Unless they've had a message from the afterlife.”

Roddy finishes his coffee and stands up.

“About this weekend,” he says.

“They printed out the hands of bridge they'd played and discussed them in the pub afterward. These people are so
competitive
.”

“I thought I might go down on Friday evening.”

She looks up from her paper at last.

“Go down where?”

“I've been meaning to visit Worth Abbey,” Roddy says, not meeting Diana's eyes.

“What on earth for?”

“I suppose you could say, for the purpose of contemplation.”

“What do you want to contemplate?”

“Nothing, really. The idea is you go into the silence.”

“Don't be so silly, Roddy. You can go into the silence in your shed.”