Читать книгу Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection - Kathleen Tessaro - Страница 23

The contents of a woman’s jewellery box are a chronicle of her past; more telling than her underwear drawer, bathroom cabinet or even the contents of her handbag. The story the jewellery box tells is a romance and hopefully for you, it is a grand and passionate one.

Jewellery is the only element of an ensemble whose sole purpose is elegance, and elegance in jewellery is a highly individual matter. It is therefore impossible to say that only a particular kind of jewellery should be worn. One thing however is certain: an elegant woman, even if she adores jewellery as much as I do, should never indulge her fancy to the point of resembling a Christmas tree dripping with ornaments.

Finally, a word to would-be husbands: an engagement ring is often the only genuine jewel a woman owns, so please, invest in one of a respectable size. The shock of paying for a good quality ring will evaporate the instant you see your thrilled fiancée proudly displaying it to all of her friends and relations. And secondly, do not underestimate the advantages of buying only from the very best. A ring box from Cartier, Asprey, or Tiffany’s will be prized almost as much as the ring itself. And this is one occasion where you do not want to be accused of economizing!

I close the book and lean it softly against my chest. Imagine receiving a box from Cartier or Asprey! As for Tiffany’s, I’ve never been in – not even to browse. I wonder what it looks like inside. Or what it’s like to walk in on the arm of a man who loves you, knowing that when you come out, you’ll be wearing a diamond ring or maybe a sapphire surrounded by brilliants. I gaze at my hand resting on the duvet and try to envisage a sparkling, bright diamond solitaire on my fourth finger. Closing one eye, I concentrate as hard as I can but still, all I see is the pink, slightly wrinkly flesh where my finger and knuckle meet.

I look over at my husband, who’s reading in bed next to me, and watch as he furiously gnaws away at a non-existent hangnail on his thumb. He’s reading the evening paper as if it’s written in code, scowling as he diligently scours its pages for clues.

He never gave me an engagement ring.

It slipped his mind.

He had planned to ask me to marry him, but evidently in much the same way that you plan to keep a dental appointment. Later, he claimed not to know that when you propose, it’s customary to present the woman with a ring.

I told myself at the time that we were beyond romantic gestures; unorthodox; unique. And we congratulated ourselves for not indulging in any of the common, more banal expressions of love. I even looked up the word romance in the dictionary once, obsessed with justifying its absence from our relationship.

‘A picturesque falsehood,’ I read out, closing the book triumphantly. ‘See, it’s not real. Romance is a lie.’

And he nodded sagely. How reassuring, to know the emptiness surrounding us is real.

But, as I sit here, pretending I can see a diamond on my bare finger, it occurs to me that intellect can be a terrible, deceptive thing.

I remember the day he asked me to marry him. We were in Paris in the middle of a heatwave. He’d just finished the run of a play where he was a dog, scrabbling around on all fours, and had badly hurt his knee. He was limping around with a stick and I had a cold. The French love suppositories. All the cold medicines seemed to involve inserting something into your bottom, so I preferred to sniffle and sneeze as we stumbled around the great city, determined to absorb its beauty.

The relationship had come to a standstill several months ago. I knew he was going to propose because there was nowhere else for it to go and I was deeply irritated that he hadn’t asked me yet. I was tired and ill and wanted to go back to the room, take off my dress and lie down. But I knew he was measuring each place we went as a potential setting for the proposal. So I stumbled on, pretending to find everything charming, lest my bad attitude spoil the moment and delay it further.

And I wore a dress because that’s what you wore when someone proposed to you.

We drifted through the landscape of Paris, hoping to find on a bench or in a narrow alleyway the reason for our continued association. Eventually we came to sit under the shade of some trees in the Jardins du Luxembourg.

‘You’re not happy,’ he said at last.

‘I’m afraid,’ I conceded.

He waited patiently in the stifling heat.

‘Remember when we first met,’ I began, feeling a wave of nausea building, ‘and you had a … a friendship …’

He pressed his eyes closed against the burning sun. ‘That’s over,’ he said. ‘You know that’s over.’

‘Yes, but it’s what’s behind it that scares me.’

He kept them closed. ‘There’s nothing behind it, Louise. We’ve been all through this.’

But it wouldn’t go away; it was like a third person on the bench between us.

‘I’m only saying, I mean, as a reflection of your true self …’ I persisted.

He opened his eyes. ‘There is no “true self”. I am who I make myself to be. It was a normal friendship.’

‘But you had to break up with him. When we met, you broke up with him. Friends are pleased when you meet someone. They stick around, get to know them. You don’t meet them in the park one wet Wednesday afternoon and quietly inform them that “things have changed”. They don’t disappear – not when they’ve been calling you every day for years …’

He grabbed my wrist. ‘What do you want from me? What is it that you actually want? Do you want me to pretend it never happened? Is that it?’

‘No, but don’t you understand? How do I know it won’t happen again?’ I tried to pull away, but he held on tightly.

‘Because I won’t let it. I just won’t let it.’ His voice was defiant but his eyes looked exhausted, lost. ‘I promise you, Louise, I promise I won’t let you down.’

He let go and my arm dropped limply by my side. I stared at the sandy walkway. Everything inside me was telling me to leave, to walk away.

We’re in Paris. It’s romantic. A French family walks by, complete with small children and grandparents, as if they’d been cued in by an unseen director.

I say it quietly, but I say it. ‘What if that’s your true nature. You cannot, no matter how hard you try, deny your true nature.’

He rises slowly and holds out his hand. ‘I’m not going to have this conversation again. Either you accept me the way I am or not. It’s up to you.’

I get up. I tell myself I’m crazy, stupid. He loves me, doesn’t he? He says the words, doesn’t he? I have a cold; I’m being dramatic.

And I don’t want to be alone.

We walk. We stumble on, into the heat. It never becomes more comfortable.

The next night he proposes to me in the middle of Le Pont Des Arts and I accept.

I close the book and look again at my husband. He’s completing the crossword, methodically crossing out each clue as he goes, writing the answers in pen.

He has kept his promise; he has not let me down.

1. We’ve always lived comfortably, in the best neighbourhoods, often within walking distance of the West End.

2. He has never been rude to me in public or, to the best of my knowledge, unfaithful.

3. He has looked after me, managing the household finances, taking care of me when I’ve been ill, and constantly seeking to improve our home.

4. He does the laundry. I regularly come home to find my clothes neatly folded and stacked on the bed.

5. When he’s working in the West End, he picks up the Sunday papers outside Charing Cross on his way home on Saturday night so that we can stay up late and read them together.

6. We often go for long walks together late at night, all over London, when the city is transformed by stillness.

7. He is a good companion.

8. And he has brought me the perfect cup of tea every morning in bed for the past five years.

Who am I to say this isn’t love?

The first time I saw him, it was at the opening night party of The Fourth of July. It was my first big professional role and I was ecstatic with the feeling that I’d made it; I’d arrived. The audience had given us a standing ovation and everyone was certain the play would transfer into the West End. I was wearing my favourite red dress, a long swirling concoction of silk crêpe that flowed and clung to the body. The lilting, pulsating rhythms of Latin music filled the house in Ladbroke Grove where we were celebrating and some of the guys were mixing pitchers of margaritas in the kitchen. The rest of us were dancing on the patio, swaying and turning with our arms outstretched, laughing too loudly in the cool, early autumn air.

When he appeared, a gatecrasher from another theatre, tall and slender, with light hair and pale blue eyes, I barely noticed him. He wasn’t my type. He was in a new play at the Albery and doing well for himself. But I had other plans. My live-in boyfriend had cheated on me a few months earlier. I ignored it at the time, but tonight, wearing my red dress and drinking too many margaritas, I was determined to pull.

I don’t know how or why I came to be kissing him. But the next morning, nursing a violent hangover and lying very, very still on the cold, flat futon in the bed-sitting studio I shared with my cheating boyfriend, I realized I’d made a mistake.

I called to let him know I’d fucked up, that it was just something stupid and to laugh it off but instead he must’ve heard the confusion and fear in my voice. ‘Let’s meet for a coffee,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s really bothering you. Maybe I can help.’

And so we met in a little Polish tearoom off the Finchley Road, where they served lemon tea in glasses and the air was thick with the fug of goulash soup. It rained and we sat at a tiny corner table and he listened while I told him the whole, sordid tale of my unfaithful boyfriend. I apologized for ‘behaving badly’ and he nodded his head and said it was all understandable under the circumstances. And then we walked, very slowly and for a long time through the quiet streets of West Hampstead. He told me he’d ring me again, to see how I was doing.

The next day we met in the outdoor café in Regent’s Park. It was too cold to sit outside, but we did anyway. Moving indoors required more commitment than we were prepared to make, so we perched gingerly on the edge of the wooden benches, shivering. And again, I told him things I hadn’t intended telling anyone and he listened. All the feelings that had been bottled up for the past six months came crashing forward and I didn’t think I’d be able to bear it.

The day after that we met on the other side of Regent’s Park and walked until we came to a street in Fitzrovia. He stopped and said, ‘This is where my flat is.’ I followed him up the winding stairs and we sat on a sofa in the front room. It was a tiny flat but everything was immaculate, spotless. It was so different from the bed-sitting room I shared with my boyfriend, crammed full of books, papers and clothes. There was space to breathe here; everything was visible. We talked and I cried and told him I didn’t know what to do. He held me, and I stayed curled up in his arms for a very long time.

Then we went into his bedroom.

The bed was made so tightly, so perfectly, that there were no creases anywhere. The books on the shelf were in alphabetical order. Everything was white – the bedclothes, the carpet, the bookshelf, the desk. He took out a volume of poems. We sat on the bed and he read to me ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. And when he finished, there were tears on his cheeks.

And there, in the clean, white, untouched room, we tore at each other’s clothes, grabbing and pulling, twisting the perfect sheets, shattering the silence.

When it was over, we dressed again, quickly, without looking at one another, and walked back into the safe neutrality of the park.

And, there, under the sheltering boughs of a chestnut tree, an hour after we made love, he told me that he had been thinking … that when he had broken up with his previous girlfriend, it was because he suspected … that he was afraid he might be … well, that there might be something wrong with him.

We didn’t speak for weeks after that. The play transferred into the West End. I left my boyfriend and slept on the sofa in a girlfriend’s flat. But every day I thought of him, of how he’d listened to me and held me and how peaceful and serene the cool white world was where he lived.

And then he rang.

We met in the same outdoor café, only this time we moved inside where it was warm. After an embarrassed silence, I started to say, fumbling for words, how I thought we could probably still be friends, when he reached across the table and took hold of my hands.

His eyes were feverish and the words came spilling out on top of one another, in a disjointed torrent I struggled to keep up with. Never before had he been so animated, so passionate, or alive. He had just been afraid, he said, he could see that now. For so long – too long – he’d been on his own in the apartment; day after day, just waiting for something to happen, for some sign. He’d been overwhelmed by depression, suicidal even and hadn’t known what to do. Which way to go. The men … he’d tried, but it had repulsed him. He’d been disgusted. Ashamed. But it had all been just a red herring, nothing more than a phantom. The truth, the real truth, was that he had just been afraid to love anyone.

But that was over.

Now he loved me.

He held my hands tighter. He’d tried to forget me, but he couldn’t. I haunted him, whispered to him, thoughts of me swam around in his head day and night.

He pulled me closer and looked into my eyes. I’d never know how desperate, how lonely, how hopeless it had all been. Or how I’d changed him. Changed him to the very core.

Laughing, suddenly euphoric, he showered my face with kisses and told me how he knew, as soon as he saw me in my bright red dress, that I was the one for him. And how all he wanted to do was to help me, take care of me, look after me.

‘Please, Louise! Rumple the bed sheets! Pile the sink high with dirty dishes! Hang your red dress from the centre of the ceiling in my cold, empty bedroom! But most of all stay.’

I smiled, leant forward and kissed him.

He seemed the kindest, most gentle person I had ever known.

‘You look tired,’ Mrs P says, breaking the silence between us.

I stare up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not sleeping very well,’ I say at last.

She expects me to go on but I don’t. I’m too tired to talk, too tired to do anything but curl up on the dreaded daybed and fall asleep. There’s a tiny spider attempting to scale the elaborate moulding in the corner; I watch as it slips back over the same few inches, again and again.

‘Why do you think you’re sleeping so badly?’ Her voice is frustrated, tense. I feel for her, having to play such an active role in our session. She must’ve imagined herself as a kind of female Freud, curing patients of deep-seated traumas and neuroses. But instead she gets to watch me take a nap.

‘My husband … we’re …’ I yawn and force my eyes to stay open. ‘We’re falling apart. The whole thing is falling apart. And I can’t sleep any more when he’s there.’

‘What does that mean? “Falling apart?”’

I shift onto my side and pull my knees up towards my chest. I can’t get comfortable. ‘It means the glue that used to stick us together isn’t there any more.’

‘And what glue is that?’

The answer flashes in my brain almost instantly, but I think a moment longer because it’s not the one I’m expecting.

‘Fear,’ I say.

‘Fear of what?’

The spider tires again. And fails.

‘Fear of being alone.’

She crosses her legs. ‘And what’s wrong with being alone?’

The spider has given up. I watch as it descends slowly from the ceiling on an invisible silk thread.

‘I don’t know. I used to think everything was wrong with being alone. That I would die, kind of literally implode with loneliness. But lately, lately I’m not so sure.’

‘Louise, do you love your husband?’ Her voice is challenging, hard.

I’m quiet for a long time. A gust of wind blows through the open window and the spider wavers, dangling precariously. It couldn’t be more fragile.

‘Love isn’t the point. As a matter of fact, it only makes it more confusing. It’s not a matter of loving or not loving. I’ve changed. And it isn’t enough just to be safe any more.’

‘And is that what you were before? Safe?’

‘That’s what I thought. But now I see that I was afraid.’ I close my eyes again; I’m getting a headache. ‘It’s like that thing, that thing that when you know something, you can’t ever go back and pretend you don’t know it. You can never go back to the way you were before.’

‘But you can move forward,’ she reminds me.

Yes, I think. But at what cost?

Weeks later, I come home from work to find my husband sitting, still in his overcoat, on the living room sofa. He looks dreadful, as he has done for weeks. By some strange, sick law of nature, as I become more attractive, he declines. It’s as if only one of us is allowed to be appealing at a time. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, his hair wild and unkempt and he seems to have forgotten that razors exist. He should be gone, at the theatre getting ready to go on, but he’s not. He’s here instead.

‘Oh!’ I say when I see him sitting there, staring into the middle distance. ‘You’d better go, hadn’t you?’

But he just looks at me, like some feral animal that’s been trapped in the house by accident.

I should feel concern, or worry, but the truth is I’m more irritated than anything else. We have an unspoken agreement, an arrangement that each of us has been honouring for months now: I go to work in the day and he’s gone in the evening when I get home. He’s now on my time and I don’t want him here.

But I sit down anyway, in the green chair, and wait.

‘We need to talk,’ he says at last.

Here it is; the conversation we’ve been avoiding for months. I feel sick and yet strangely exhilarated, calm even. ‘Fine,’ I agree. ‘You start.’

He stares at me for another long moment and when he speaks, his voice is accusatory. ‘You’re different. You’ve changed. And I feel like I’ve done something wrong but I don’t know what it is. What have I done wrong, Louise? What is it that I’ve done?’

I take a deep breath. ‘You’re right; I have changed but it’s all been good. Surely you can see that?’

‘All I see is that you’re more concerned with the way you look.’

‘But that’s good. I look better than ever before – you should be proud of me.’

‘I liked you better before. You were easier to be around.’

‘You mean less demanding.’

‘I mean less vain,’ he contradicts. ‘Less self-obsessed.’

It’s starting to get ugly. I can feel myself baulking at every word he speaks. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man that only six months ago, I would’ve given my right arm to please.

‘You know what, people are supposed to change,’ I remind him. ‘It’s a good thing. You’re just used to me not giving a shit what I look like. The truth is, you like me better when I’m depressed. Well, I don’t want to be depressed any more. I don’t want to spend my whole life hiding and feeling ashamed and apologizing for myself. I have a right to look good and to be happy. And I have a right to change!’ I’m shaking, my whole body quivering with the force of my declaration. ‘Anyway, the problem isn’t about me changing. I think the real problem is that we don’t really want the same things any more.’

‘Like what?’ He sounds crushed.

‘Like … I don’t know … everything. I mean, we’re not going to have children, right? So what are we going to do? Just sit around in this flat of ours, hunting for the perfect lampshade and growing old?’

‘Is that really so bad?’

He just doesn’t get it. ‘Yes! Yes, it is that bad! Can’t you see that it’s bad for us to be sitting around here like two pensioners with no surprises, no passion, no hope, just waiting to die? I mean, doesn’t that strike you as bad?’

For a moment it looks as if he’s going to cry, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. ‘Is that really the way you see our life together? Is that really what you think? That we’re like two old pensioners?’

I know I’m hurting him. But if we don’t speak honestly now, we never will. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I think.’

He sits, motionless, cradling his head in his hands. Silence stretches out before us, vast and insurmountable. Then suddenly, quite suddenly, he pulls himself onto his feet and I watch in horror as he crosses the floor and kneels in front of me.

‘I should have done this earlier, Louise. I’m so sorry, I’ve been very selfish.’ He’s looking up at me, his eyes two enormous pools. I feel sick.

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a tiny, clear plastic bag.

‘Perhaps we haven’t been very passionate … I’m not very good at showing you how important you are to me. I’m sorry. I’d like to make it up to you.’ And he puts the little plastic bag into my lap.

There, floating amidst the emptiness, are three tiny coloured stones. It’s a surreal moment; I can’t quite figure out how we went from discussing our life together to this bizarre, make-shift proposal.

‘I got them from Hatton Garden. We can have them made into a ring.’

I should say something – act surprised or pleased, but instead I just stare at the packet, unable to form any cohesive thought other than shock and dismay.

‘Louise, I’m here … on my knees before you. I know we’ve been having difficulties. And …’ I have the uneasy feeling he’s rehearsed this; he’s looking down now, taking a pregnant pause. ‘And I want you to have this, to know that I love you, that I’m sorry.’

He looks up at me again.

It’s my cue. My head is pounding; say something nice, something conciliatory, it screams at me. But when I speak, my voice is cold and flat.

‘Exactly what do you want me to have? Some coloured stones in a bag?’

He blinks at me.

‘This isn’t a ring, is it?’

‘Yes, but … but it could be.’

‘But it isn’t. What kind of stones are these?’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know the names.’

And then I find myself doing something very unexpected; I hand the bag back to him. ‘Why don’t you get up,’ I say.

He stares at me in amazement. ‘Louise, please!’

‘Please what?’ I’m suddenly overwhelmingly angry. I want him off the floor. I don’t want to be a part of this charade anymore. It’s offensive. All of it; the stones, the speech. ‘Why are you doing this?’ I demand. ‘Why are you doing this now, after all this time?’

‘I … I’m doing it because I don’t want you to leave.’

‘Why?’ I persist. ‘What difference does it make whether I stay or go?’

He just kneels there, staring at me.

‘Be honest, you don’t really want me, do you? I mean, it’s not like you want to touch me, do you?’

‘I do want to touch you,’ he says, his eyes not meeting mine.

‘Then why don’t you?’

But he just shakes his head, over and over.

And I snap.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I shout, my voice so loud and shrill it doesn’t even sound like it’s coming from me. ‘Just tell me! Say it! Why?’

‘Because,’ he whispers, his hands trembling as they cover his face, ‘I cannot trust myself when you’re gone.’