Moonshine

‘Jazzy—Of course I’m not defending her, but surely there must be something more than that? I mean, isn’t that just family life? It doesn’t sound quite enough to justify ending a marriage.’

‘I thought you’d be the one person who’d understand.’ Jazzy sounded hurt. ‘I know you’re terribly anti having affairs with married men but I thought you said you’d always be on my side, whatever.’

‘Oh, I am. I am! But, Jazz, you have to be so sure that you and Teddy will be happy together.’

‘We will be. Teddy says that no one in his whole life has understood him as I do. He says it’s uncanny how alike we are, how we feel the same about everything that’s important, how we can communicate without words. Honestly, it’s true. Don’t you remember, it all began when we met at that ghastly ball and discovered we both hated Latin-American music but loved Gershwin. And then we found that our favourite film was Breakfast at Tiffany’s and our favourite place to stay was Raffles Hotel. Then we went on talking practically the whole evening, agreeing about absolutely everything. It was amazing.’

Poor darling Jazzy. So beautiful and so trusting. When I had once suggested that Teddy had simply had his eye on getting her into bed she had been wounded by my misanthropy.

‘Well, if you’re quite sure …’

‘I’m utterly, totally, completely sure. As sure as anyone in the history of the world has ever been about anything. It’s a synthingummy of minds and souls. And he says that making love to me is like eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Isn’t that brilliant?’

‘Perhaps it was when Sydney Smith said it.’

‘Sydney who?

‘Smith. A nineteenth-century cleric. He was describing heaven.’

‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Of course Teddy’s so well read.’ It would have been unkind to say that the metaphor was so well known that it had become almost hackneyed. Jazzy had been to dozens of expensive schools all over the world and learned little in any of them. ‘And he says making love to Lydia is like waving an arm in a barn.’

I was repelled. ‘If you give a woman four children you can hardly complain if there’s some falling off from physical perfection.’

‘No. I agree. It was naughty of him. I’ve decided I’m not going to say mean things about her any more or even think them if I can help. I’m desperately sorry for her, actually, and I feel quite haunted by the idea that at this moment she’s going about her life unaware of the sword of Damo-what’s-it that’s about to fall. And the children … when I think of them …’ For a moment the excitement went out of Jazzy’s voice.

‘What do you mean, “unaware”?’

‘Teddy decided the best thing would be to avoid a confrontation when things might be said that couldn’t be taken back. You know, to allow her to save face. He’s doing his best to make it as easy for her as possible, which I agree with, one hundred per cent. I couldn’t love him if he wasn’t a good person. He’s madly considerate of her feelings.’

‘Oh, madly,’ I said, with a sarcasm I instantly regretted. ‘Of course it’s a dreadful situation for everyone.’

‘Dreadful. So he’s left her a note. She’s been away all week with the children visiting her mother. That was what prompted the row about him not doing enough with the family. But his mother-in-law is a complete bitch and is foul to Teddy. Lydia’s getting back tomorrow.’

I imagined her arriving home exhausted after a long journey with squabbling children, planning what she would give them for supper, anticipating a hot bath and a glass of wine for herself after putting a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine. Pausing by the hall table to take Teddy’s letter from the pile that would have accumulated during a week’s absence. She would open it, expecting a reminder that the man was coming to service the boiler, only to discover that she was now a single parent and had become solely responsible for household maintenance.

‘It’s such heaven being alone with him,’ sighed Jasmine. ‘Knowing we don’t have to hurry into bed to make the most of a few measly hours. I feel as though I’ve been given pure oxygen to breathe. I’m in love with the world and with everything in it: the island, the village, the spaghetti bolognese we had for lunch. It isn’t a very good hotel but Teddy says we must economize now he’s got two women to support and naturally I don’t mind a bit. I’m even in love with the rather nasty cow-pat-green pillow-cases on the bed because we’re together at last and can luxuriate in each other.’

‘It’s marvellous to hear you so happy. How long do you expect to stay?’

‘Oh, it’s rather open-ended. Teddy’s taken the whole week off. I never want to see London again. I wish we could hire a gypsy caravan and let the horse take us wherever it wanted to.’

‘Mm, that does sound fun. But one of you’d need to know something about horses. Feeding, tacking up, grooming …’

‘Oh, Bobbie, how typical of you to think of depressing, practical things.’

‘Sorry. So what happens now? When she’s finished snipping their wedding album into confetti and making a bonfire of his golf-clubs, what does she do next?’

‘Teddy’s going to ring her tomorrow to find out how she’s taken it. I’m glad he’s so thoughtful. It’s one of the things I love about him.’

A quip about Teddy’s extraordinary solicitude in abandoning his wife and children to abscond with a girl half his age darted into my mind but I suppressed it. ‘I hope it goes all right,’ I said. ‘And that he deserves you.’

‘I’m certainly going to do my best to deserve him. When I think of everything he’s given up for me, it’s really humbling. I’ve got to try and make it up to him somehow. I mean, sex isn’t everything, is it?’

‘Not for you, perhaps,’ I said cautiously. ‘I do think that for some men—’

‘Oh, darling Bobbie, you’re always so cynical. I wish Teddy had an identical twin so you could know what it was like to be adored by someone truly wonderful.’ I remembered Teddy’s pasty face and crooked teeth in his rat-like mouth and felt nauseated. ‘If I could I’d share him with you,’ Jazzy went on. ‘You’ve been the most marvellous friend to me through all the bad times and I’m so grateful.’ I immediately felt guilty. ‘Are things still awful at home? How’s your mother?’

‘Everything’s the same except I’ve met some people who live nearby who’ve become good friends and I don’t mind being here nearly so much.’

‘Not a nice, handsome, eligible man with a vast bank balance?’

‘No.’

‘Ah well, darling. It’ll happen one day. I’d better go and see what’s happened to Teddy. I want our first night together as a proper couple to be sublime. I left him having a drink in the bar. The poor sweetie’s had so much to worry him recently, he sometimes doesn’t know quite when to stop.’ This was the first time Teddy’s obvious drink problem had been openly referred to by Jazzy. ‘I’ll ring you very soon. Try to be happy, dearest Bobbie.’

‘You too.’

‘Oh, I shall be in paradise, never fear.’

Five minutes after Jazzy had hung up the telephone rang again. It was Sarah, my other ex-housemate.

‘Bobbie! Have you heard about Jazzy? She’s gone off with that swine Bayliss. I tremble for her. A pig of pigs. An emperor of hogs.’ Sarah was a bolder, more forthright person than I. She had been so outspoken about her dislike of Teddy that she and Jazzy had had a serious falling out from which their relationship had never quite recovered.

‘She called me from the Isle of Wight just now.’

‘How is the poor deluded girl?’

‘Still deluded. But deliriously happy.’

‘Silly fool!’

‘I’m afraid so. But I keep hoping against hope that perhaps the benign influence of Jazzy will make Teddy a little less repulsive.’

‘No chance. The man would have to have a complete personality refit to be tolerable. When I think of the tears she’s shed over that worm, the crises, the sleepless nights, the chronic headaches and colds, the times she couldn’t eat … She’s like a walking bundle of sticks. God preserve us from married men.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘But even if he were single I don’t think I’d like him.’

‘He’s an ignorant, talentless, priapic little runt.’ Sarah was clever and found most people irritatingly slow and feeble-minded but I knew she was genuinely fond of Jazzy. ‘But being married gives a man an excuse to behave badly with a convenient let-out clause. He can be as selfish as he likes and blame family commitments. A single man can hardly rush round at midnight, poke you senseless, then bugger off without so much as a snack at the local caff or a decent conversation. I mean, when did Stinker Bayliss last take Jazzy out for a good hot dinner? Of course he says it’s because he’s afraid they’ll be seen but I reckon he’s as mean as hell.’

‘Well, they’re making up for it now.’

‘I bet it’s the cheapest place he could get a booking.’

‘She did say it wasn’t a particularly good hotel,’ I admitted.

‘There you are. I hope at least she’ll tuck in now she’s got the chance and get some ballast to withstand the next let-down.’ Sarah was generously proportioned herself and scornful of delicate appetites.

‘Perhaps it really will be all right. Who could know Jazzy and not love her?’

‘Of course it isn’t going to be all right! Honestly, Bobbie, have you been at the absinthe? There’s nothing wrong with Jazzy. Except perhaps too few brain cells. But a skunk like Bayliss is incapable of loving anyone but himself. You know perfectly well there’s nothing ahead but disaster.’

Lying in bed that night, trying to read by a bulb so dim that even the moths ignored its puny rays and instead crawled over the pages of my book, I thought of Teddy. I remembered his satisfied pig-like eyes and the way he stared at my bust when Jazzy’s back was turned and wondered at the mysterious thing called love. And then, of course, I thought of Burgo who had hovered like a persistent phantom haunting my brain the entire day as I cooked, cleaned, fetched library books and ironed. His face had been on each of those forty-two napkins, swimming in the pea-pod soup, staring up from the cover of Fear not, my Lovely in place of the beetle-browed Lord Lucifer Twynge. I had rubbed Burgo’s reflection from every dusty inch of the dining table.

Each time the doorbell rang I anticipated the florist’s van and an insulting bunch of hybridized hothouse blooms to thank me for my readiness to accommodate his sexual needs. I had already decided to pass them on immediately to Mrs Treadgold. When another day passed without a bouquet to spurn or even the briefest note of thanks to rip to pieces I began to feel angry.

On the third day after the tennis party I opened the front door in response to a sustained imperative ring to find a strange man on the doorstop, flowerless but carrying a small black leather bag. He was lean and rangy with dark oiled hair swept straight back from a cliff-like brow and sharp aristocratic features.

‘Miss Norton?’ He handed me a card on which was written Frederick Newmarch, followed by a string of letters, among which I recognized FRCS. ‘Burgo Latimer asked me to call. I’ve come to see your mother.’ I opened my mouth but before I could think what I ought to say he was in the hall. He looked at me expectantly, impatience in his glittering grey eye. ‘Just lead the way, Miss Norton. I’m sorry to hurry you but I’m operating in London at twelve.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I walked rapidly down the corridor that led from the hall to the morning room with the sensation that Frederick Newmarch was snapping at my heels. ‘I hope … You mustn’t mind if she isn’t co-operative—’

‘How old is your mother?’

‘Fifty-one. But she looks much—’

‘How long has she been unwell?’

‘Oh, I suppose about three months. She broke her hip in April—’

‘How’s her appetite?’

‘Poor, really, though she hasn’t lost any weight. If anything she’s put it on. But she does eat a lot of sweets.’

‘Bowels?’

‘A little constipated.’

‘Does she complain of pain?’

‘She says her arms and legs hurt sometimes.’

‘But not specifically the hip?’

I paused by the door of the morning room. ‘Not now, no. It seems to be a general all-over discomfort.’

‘Is this her room? You needn’t come in. I’ll introduce myself.’

I was doubtful about his reception but Frederick Newmarch was evidently a man of steel and I was disinclined to argue with him. ‘You mustn’t mind if she’s rather disagreeable. I think she’s depressed—’

‘Wait for me in the hall. I’ll be ten to fifteen minutes.’

I sat on the chair by the telephone, wondering at a different kind of world in which one asked enormous favours from demi-gods and presumably returned them in kind. Burgo had not forgotten me. I was aware of a feeling of exultation that I could hardly account for. When I heard Mr Newmarch’s approaching footsteps echoing authoritatively from the encaustic tiles I leaped to attention.

‘How did she—’ I began.

‘I’ve checked her over. I’ll get a nurse to come this afternoon and take bloods to confirm my diagnosis. But it seems pretty straightforward. Her heart’s slow and there’s severe myxoedema. She’s had the problem some time, I imagine. The hospital ought to have picked it up.’

‘Then it’s nothing to do with her hip?’

‘That seems to have healed all right although obviously I can’t say for certain without an X-ray.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must run.’

‘What ought I to—’

‘They’ll put her on medication straight away and you should see a rapid improvement.’

‘Really? Oh, this is so kind of you. I can’t tell you how grateful—’

‘You’ve got my number. Ring my secretary if you’re worried about anything.’

He glared at the front door impeding his progress. I flung it open before he resorted to battering it down and called to his departing back, ‘Thank you so much for coming …’

He jumped into his car and shot away. I opened the door of the morning room, expecting to have a book hurled at my head. My mother was lying back on her pillows, staring out of the window. She was a bad colour and, despite the jars of cream I rubbed in morning, noon and night, her skin was dry and flaky. Slowly she turned her head to look at me.

‘I wish you’d wash my hair, Roberta.’

‘Oh, certainly. With pleasure.’ I had been trying for weeks to persuade her to let me but she had always said she was too tired. ‘What did you think of Mr Newmarch?’

‘It’s exhausting to be pulled around.’ Her gooseberry eyes were reproachful. It may have been my imagination but they seemed brighter already, such is the power of a good doctor who can inspire confidence. ‘However, it was a relief to have a gentleman to consult. The working classes have such coarse responses. They don’t understand how one feels.’

‘He seems to think he knows what’s wrong.’

‘He was quite intelligent, I thought.’

‘I couldn’t tell. He didn’t waste many words on me. He’s amazingly bossy.’

‘Bossy, would you say? I’d call him … masterful.’

As I bent to rearrange the bedclothes my attention was caught by the jacket of the book on the bedside table and I was immediately struck by the resemblance of Mr Frederick Newmarch to Lord Lucifer Twynge.

The following afternoon as I was boiling sugar and water for a crème caramel Oliver put a tousled head round the kitchen door.

‘Telephone for you.’

‘Damn! I can’t leave this. Ask them to ring back—No, wait a minute, it might be Jazzy. I’d better speak to her.’

‘It’s a bloke.’

I hesitated. Possibly it was Mr Newmarch, telephoning to know the result of the tests, in which case it would be ungrateful to put him to the trouble of calling back. ‘Will you come and watch this like a hawk and take it off the heat the minute it goes brown?’

Oliver shambled across the kitchen, yawning. Even as I handed him the wooden spoon I made a mental note that his dressing-gown could do with a wash.

‘Hello?’

‘Roberta.’

It did not occur to me to pretend I did not recognize Burgo’s voice. An odd sensation, something like pins and needles, spread to my extremities. ‘Oh, hello! I must tell you, he was wonderful! It was so good of you to remember.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Newmarch. He came to see my mother yesterday and sent someone to do a blood test. They telephoned me with the results today. Usually one waits a week only to find they’ve lost them. I’m astonished at the power of the Word. She’s suffering from hypothyroidism. Apparently there’s something called thyroxin which will make her better. I’m picking some pills up from the surgery this evening.’

‘Good. He’s a strange man. A cross between Rudolf Rassendyll and Alice’s white rabbit. I bet he wakes regularly during the night just to see what time it is.’

‘I don’t know how you can speak so disrespectfully. To me he’s the eighth wonder of the world and I’m ready to subscribe to a bust in marble. Who’s Rudolf Rassendyll?’

‘Don’t you remember The Prisoner of Zenda? He was the gallant hero.’

‘Oh yes. But it was kind of you to send him.’

‘It’s nice to be the recipient of so much gratitude, but that’s not why I rang. I’ve been touring the North since I last saw you, making speeches and playing bingo with our senior citizens. I got back to London last night. I want to see you.’

‘Well …’ I tried to hang on to my determination to finish the affair before it had properly begun but from the moment I heard his voice the conviction had begun to weaken. ‘I don’t know. It would be lovely to see you but—’

‘Come on, then. I’m in the call-box down the road. I’ll find a suitable bush by the gate at the bottom of your drive and try to make myself invisible.’

My blood began to seethe as violently as the caramel. ‘You’re in Cutham Down?’

‘Didn’t I just say so?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Hurry up.’

There was a buzzing sound. He had put down the receiver. I tore off my apron, dragged my fingers through my hair in front of the hall mirror and let myself out of the front door. I ran through the wood, which was quicker than following the curves of the drive, and then slowed as I drew near the gate. It would not do to arrive actually panting. I looked around but could see no one. For a moment I wondered if it might have been a cruel joke. Then a hand grabbed my arm and drew me into a stout laurel.

‘You nearly made me scr—’ The rest of what I had to say was lost as he kissed me long and hard.

‘That’s better,’ he said as he let go at last. ‘I’ve been longing for that. Not only that, of course.’ He looked at my face. ‘Just as I remembered it. Come here.’ He held me tightly against him and then began to kiss me again, more gently. ‘Oh dear! I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. Cold shower urgently required.’ Obediently, the rain, which had held off for the last hour, began to fall and at once became a downpour, buffeting the leaves and releasing the scent of earth and mildew. ‘But I told myself it would be better than nothing.’ He kissed the top of my head as drops trickled down my face and tried to shelter me beneath his coat. ‘And it is. We’ve got ten minutes before I have to drive back to London. This afternoon’s meeting was cancelled so I seized the moment and leaped on a train. Simon’s parked discreetly up the road. He’s driving me straight back to town so I can be in the House by eight.’

‘You don’t mean you came all the way here just to … just to …?’

‘Just to kiss you? Yes. Even my impatient ardour is deterred by the thought of making love in this benighted wood. Besides, there isn’t time. Tell me, my love … are you my love?’

He looked at me intently.

I was, at that moment, incapable of lying. ‘Yes. For good or ill, and I suppose it must be for ill.’

‘Don’t!’ He held me tightly. ‘I won’t let anything hurt you. Trust me.’

So I did.

‘I admit the man has talent,’ said Kit. ‘Despite my natural antipathy, I have to hand it to him. He knew you’d need a romantic gesture rather than a postcard and a box of chocolates.’

‘You needn’t tell me I was a gullible fool,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

‘I didn’t mean that. The thing is, you were already in love with him. He just had to break down your resistance. So there you were. At the beginning of an incandescent love affair. The die was cast.’

‘Yes. Before then we were just playing. Although it was heady with romance, everything that occurred before that declaration in the laurels meant comparatively little. Afterwards it seemed to me that everything important – that is to say, my ideas about myself and other people, my presumptions about the future – was substantially changed. And pain was ever present, heightening the pleasure, a sort of fixative of experience.’

‘You mean you felt guilty?’

‘I’m ashamed to admit that for some time, several weeks, I didn’t feel guilty at all. Anna seemed a hardly real figure in Burgo’s life. He rarely mentioned her name. She seemed to have nothing at all to do with me. I assumed they had some sort of understanding. That’s if I thought about her at all. At first I was so overwhelmed by feelings of … well, let’s call it infatuation, that nothing else mattered. The pain came from excessive excitement. An overdose of adrenaline. Because we couldn’t see each other often, the affair had to be carried on in my head. I must have been impossibly vague and unreachable. I drifted through the days that followed, cooking, cleaning, carrying trays in a dream, waiting for him to call, imagining what it would be like to see him again. Every minute of every hour I thought about him. When I got back to the house I found a ruined saucepan and a kitchen full of smoke. Oliver had left the bath running. He’d been so busy trying to mop up the bathroom floor with anything he could lay his hands on, including every clean towel in the linen cupboard and quite a few of the hated napkins I’d just ironed, he’d forgotten about the caramel. I didn’t feel so much as a flicker of annoyance. America and Russia could have gone to war, Africa and India have starved, Sussex might have been submerged by a tidal wave and I wouldn’t have given a damn. I only thought about Burgo. You see, I had never been in love before.’

‘And once you’d had a taste of it, it went straight to your head like wine-cup.’

‘I must be a sadly repressed sort of person.’

‘I think you’re perfectly adorable.’

I peered through the streaming window at banks of trees hanging over the road. Now the lower slopes of the mountains were clothed with green and looked more friendly, like parts of Italy. ‘We must be near Kilmuree.’

‘Four miles. I hope you brought an umbrella.’

‘It never occurred to me. I was so desperate to get out of the house without the press spotting me that I’ve probably brought all the wrong things.’

‘How did you manage it?’

‘A friend helped me. Oddly enough, she came to interview me for a newspaper.’

‘That sounds intriguing. You’ve just got time to tell me.’

FOURTEEN

Three days after Burgo’s and my love affair became carrion for the nation to peck over for the juiciest bits, I was standing in the kitchen measuring spoons of Bengers into a pan of warm milk for my mother. She had given up eating proper food, complaining that everything made her feel sick, and existed on invalidish things like Slippery Elm and eggnog with brandy. And of course sweets by the bagful. I suppose she was trying to sweeten a life that had become sour. The current craving was for coffee fondants.

‘Just a minute,’ said Kit. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt when you’ve just got going but I thought your mother had been restored to health months ago by the great Frederick Newmarch.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten I hadn’t told you about all that. The pills cured her hypothyroidism remarkably quickly. Her skin improved, her hair grew back, her voice lightened. Physically she looked better than I’d seen her for a long time. I planned to go back to London in September. Sarah said I could have my old room and my boss had agreed to have me back. And Burgo and I would be able to see more of each other, though we’d managed to meet most weeks in Sussex and occasionally I’d been able to get up to London for half a day. Of course, it was never enough. And that, I suppose, fanned the flames of passion.’ I paused, wincing inwardly at this cold analysis of our love. But I had to try to detach myself. ‘Anyway, I was telling you about my mother. Though she’d stopped grumbling about aches and pains, she refused to get dressed and wouldn’t leave her room. And she wouldn’t give up that beastly commode, though I knew she was capable of walking to the lavatory.