Читать книгу The Philanderer's Wife - Katherine Trelawney - Страница 8

Hilary had spent several winter months in her flat telling herself that her physical surroundings mattered little to her, because she could easily dissociate herself from them. This had always been her tactic in college, and she had rather despised those people who spent their time and money trying to make the small, neat, box-like rooms homely with plants, rugs and posters. In the neutral background of her modern college room, looking out as it did on fine old buildings and beautiful gardens of Cambridge, this had been an easy attitude to adopt. In her London flat, with its hideous yellow carpet, ancient (and once trendy, but before Hilary’s time) brown hessian wallpaper, and the view of the local launderette, she could get a bit depressed.

She had confessed this to her sister over the phone, and three days later had received a telephone call from her mother announcing her intention of arriving the next day. Her mother was like that. As mother, she claimed the privilege of appearing virtually unannounced, and in her mother’s way of thinking, she had been thoughtful by timing the visit for a weekend, when she presumed that Hilary would have nothing to do. Because she was making the long journey from Newcastle, she would have to stay at least one night, and, because it was part of the family tradition, she would have to be met at King’s Cross.

“Don’t worry,” her mother had reassured her, “I know you only have one room, so I have arranged to stay at a hotel round the corner from your house. It looks like quite a decent one, so I am sure I shall be fine there.”

Her mother struggled off the train with two huge suitcases and an assortment of plastic bags, which struck terror into Hilary’s heart. Normally mother was a great advocate of travelling light. Was she really planning on staying only two days?

“Darling, I have brought you some things for your room. Victoria told me how absolutely awful it was. Of course you’ve been so lucky, only living in nice places all your life. But never mind, we’ll soon get it looking better for you.”

Hilary hoped that her mother would have the tact not to say such things in her flat, and especially not in the earshot of any of her flatmates.

Hilary’s family came from Newcastle-on-Tyne, and lived in a large Victorian house overlooking a little area of parkland. They also had owned (until her parents’ separation) a cottage in the North York moors. Her mother and father’s families were proud of their Northernness and their prosperity, both of which went back several generations. Consequently, in the Mackay family, there was no nonsense about regarding Southerners as posh. Mrs Mackay believed that out of well-off Southerners, only the tiniest minority were anything other than nouveau riche, “or upwardly mobile, as we have to call them these days.”

“They may fancy themselves very grand because the eat goat’s cheese and drink Earl Grey tea,” she would say, “but that doesn’t mean that they know which way to spoon their soup.”

Hilary sat in the taxi with her mother feeling depressed. Was this going to happen all her life, she wondered? Would she be thirty one day and still be quite unable to prevent her mother just walking in, virtually unannounced, and taking over? And what was in all those bags? The Mackay households contained some beautiful antique furniture and valuable pictures, all inherited, but her mother’s own visual taste was frankly atrocious. There was no knowing what she would have brought.

Back in the flat, Hilary went to make a cup of coffee. She lingered over the task, practising some firm but polite phrases for the very worst eventualities. When she eventually took the coffee in, on a rather wobbly tray, she saw that her mother had wasted no time. Gone were the flat’s own curtains, a faded William Morris print which had been the one part of the indigenous decoration that Hilary had quite liked. In their place was bright blue velvet pair, which had once hung in the dining room of the Newcastle house.

“Oh, Mother,” Hilary said, “don’t you realise that I left home specially to get away from those curtains.”

Fortunately, Mrs Mackay decided not to be offended.

“Nonsense, darling,” she said. “They are very good ones. I bought them from Fenwicks.”

That had been the low point of the visit, but things had got better. Amongst the rather weird assortment in the large suitcases were some thick towels, which would make bath-time much more comfortable, a useful lamp, a very handsome rug (“Your father brought it back from India. I never liked it”) and one of Hilary’s favourite vases. It was tall, made from plain glass, and Hilary associated it with the irises that her father used to grow in the garden every spring. All in all, Hilary had to admit that she was grateful.

In a quiet moment, over a cup of tea, her mother asked Hilary about her life in London.

“Your play is finished, now isn’t it?”

“Yes, mummy, it was quite a success.”

“Victoria told me, she said it was very good and you had a full audience.” Hilary’s sister Victoria had come down to London from Durham to see Hilary’s latest production.

“And I shall be directing a ten- minute film soon.”

“Yes, darling, that sounds very good.” Mrs Mackay couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her voice. She tried to be supportive, but Hilary knew that her mother was very worried about the insecurity of her chosen career.

“And next week I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival.”

As soon as she had said this, Hilary regretted it. She had wanted to impress, and reassure her mother, but she couldn’t give away much more.

“On your own?”

“Oh, no. I am going with some friends. We’ll be networking.”

“I see. Well, I suppose that’s a good idea.” Mrs Mackay sounded doubtful, but she had accepted her daughter’s explanation without question. Hilary felt guilty. She rarely lied to her mother. But she just couldn’t tell her about Paddy.

Part of her, though, would have liked to. She didn’t often confide in her mother, but it would have been good if she could have. She would have liked to tell her mother, or perhaps anyone closely connected to her, the good things about Paddy. His enthusiasm and sociability, the way he concentrated on her. That was the most important thing. Hilary, although socially capable, often felt an emotional space between herself and other people, something that she regretted. Paddy, somehow – she just didn’t know how, exactly – just filled that space. Warm, confident, compelling, he had a way of moving in, metaphorically speaking, and getting close.

But her mother would never understand.

Then Hilary had a phone call. It was Peter Saville, whom she had known at Cambridge. He was clever, and good-looking, and Hilary had sometimes wondered if he liked her, but he had never asked her out. He was now working for a large Italian car manufacturer in Milan.

“I’m in London for a few days,” he told Hilary. “Staying with James. We are meeting up with Leonora and Jane, and wondered if you would like to join us. We thought of going for a pizza and then maybe a film.”

Hilary had quite liked Jane, although not so much Leonora. It sounded fun, though.

“Well, my mother is here at the moment,” she said. “Can I phone you back in a minute?”

“That was Peter, from Cambridge,” she told her mother. “He lives in Milan now, but he is in London for a few days and he and some others are going out this evening.”

“And are they inviting you?”

“Yes, but I don’t need to go.”

“Oh no,” Hilary was surprised to see something like relief on her mother’s face. “You must go darling. You must meet up with your friends. I shall go to my hotel. There is a very nice-looking bar there which sells light meals, and will be perfectly suitable for respectable woman eating alone. If anyone asks, I shall explain that I am visiting my daughter, who lives in a shared flat nearby, and that she is out for the evening with friends.”

Hilary couldn’t help thinking that her mother would probably tell several people these things whether they asked or not, but she didn’t say so, and was pleased to be able to phone back Peter and arrange to meet.

In the weeks after the move, relations between Paddy and Joscelyn were generally harmonious. Paddy came home almost every evening, and helped Joss work on the house, or the garden. He was quite handy with a drill, and took great care over hanging pictures around the house. He put up some special shelves to take Joss’s ever-increasing collection of books, and he drew up a plan for the garden. He and Joss pored over garden books and agreed (after some argument) on a plan for planting.

Philippa came round and admired it all, as well as Paddy’s involvement. “I’d never get Alistair to take such an interest in the house,” she had said.

There would be times, though, when Joss would remember the forthcoming trip to Cannes, which still felt like an unhealed sore to her. These times, she would harry her husband with remarks about arrangements being made “behind her back” and sad comments about how much she would have loved a trip away to the South of France. Paddy tended to ignore the former category, and respond to the latter with exaggerated reasonableness:

“You couldn’t go away just now. You have got your course. You keep telling me how seriously you take it. You can’t have it both ways, and just take off for a week whenever you feel like it.”

“I wish you would talk to me about my course. You keep promising.”

“Well, I shall when I have time. And maybe when there is something that I really can help with. You’ve got Philippa, and Ben. Ben seems to quite like playing the student again and speculating on the antics of medieval kings. I don’t have time; I have a career to think about. Ben is one of life’s dilettantes: a touch of business here, a little history there, and who knows maybe a bit of flower arranging on the side. You should be talking to him, not me.”

One long night Joscelyn slept fitfully, and thought endlessly and unproductively about how high-handed Paddy had been. In the long hours between two and four in the morning she wondered, over and again, what she could say or do that would make him realise how much he had hurt her this time. He was a good man. If only he could understand how she felt, he would not upset her in this way.

Tired and aching, Joss finally drifted into a deep sleep in the early morning. At eight, she woke, with a start. It was late. Paddy was no longer in the bed beside her: she had overslept and he would be on the way to his office by now.

But when she went downstairs, in her dressing gown and still bleary-eyed, her husband was in the kitchen. There was the smell of fresh coffee, and everything shone bright and clean.

“Look, I’ve cleaned out the teapot. It was all brown and filthy inside,” Paddy held it out for inspection. “I thought we’d have a nice breakfast. I don’t have to be in especially early today.” He moved into a corner and opened a cupboard door with a flourish. “And these are for you!”

He produced a huge bunch of roses, tightly flowered, bright red and even-shaped, and handed them over with an exaggerated gesture.

“Oh Paddy! Where did you get these?”

“From the florist. It opens at 7.30. You were still asleep. Do you like them?”

“Of course I do.” Joscelyn looked up at her husband whose eyes were turned towards her, like those of a little boy, longing but perhaps not quite daring to hope for approval.

Joss looked at the roses. Paddy always brought her red roses. Before she had met him, she had not much liked them, in her eyes there was something too glossy and unnatural about them. She loved irises, and tulips, and in the summer there was nothing more beautiful, or romantic, in her view, than a bunch of blue cornflowers. But red roses, large and glossy, were Paddy’s trademark flower.

“You are quite wonderful, Joss, quite wonderful.”

Joscelyn, uncharacteristically, forgot to put the flowers in water, and they were beginning to look a little jaded in the evening when Paddy got home and pointed them out:

“You haven’t put my flowers in water.”

“Oh no, I haven’t. I must have been distracted; the plumber came to put in the new sink. And I had to finish Howard’s End, because I have an essay to write.”

“So the plumber can distract you, eh?” Paddy was joking, but he looked a bit pained. Joss softened, and she kissed him.

“Don’t be silly.”

Serious argument was avoided, until the day before Paddy left. And when it finally came, it was not the subject of Cannes that brought it about.