It's Beginning to Hurt: Stories (21 page)

June smiled. “Not at all.”

Inside, the house had been transformed from its previous ramshackle state into a comfortable bourgeois home with chintz-upholstered sofas and armchairs, and curtains of glazed pink cotton.

A man of about fifty, tall, very well dressed, and smoothly handsome, stood up as June entered the living room.

“Paul Crawford. Good to meet you. We’re tremendously in your debt over this Mrs. Dolfuss woman of yours. She’s I believe what’s called a treasure, and fascinatingly rigid in her views.”

“I did warn your wife . . .”

“No, we enjoy her immensely. Incidentally I’m curious to hear
your
views, on bloodsports, not religion.”

“Oh?”

“I ask because my wife just now informed me that she neglected to ascertain them despite the fact that we plan to be dining shortly on a number of pigeons shot by my son and myself. May I offer you a drink?”

From the glint in his gray eye, she gathered that the man considered he was being interestingly droll. She smiled obligingly.

“I’ll have a whiskey, please. And I’ll gladly eat a pigeon shot by you or your son. I’ve shot a few myself in my time.”

He laughed loudly at this, pouring her a scotch and handing it to her with a look of steely physical interest. The look was familiar to her from a thousand social gatherings: in the past it had seldom failed to ignite something in her, even if the man on whose face it appeared didn’t especially attract her. As it happened, this particular man belonged to a type for whom she did have a certain weakness: confident, well made, and with an interest in women that consisted, in her experience, of a generalized contempt, in which a kind of aggrieved, violent desire was concealed like a stiletto. Acknowledging the attraction as she took the drink from him, she was nevertheless able to assure herself that she had no wish at all to pursue its implications. She looked away.

At dinner they were joined by the sons—there were in fact two of them, though only one appeared to be of any consequence in the father’s eyes. This was the elder, Rob, who was there with his girlfriend. He was in his second year at Oxford, handsome like his father, with the same gray-eyed stare. He and his father had a routine that consisted of his scandalizing the older man with shafts of what were clearly intended to be shockingly bigoted opinions on various political matters, at each of which the father would yelp with joyous outrage, expound at great length his own more enlightened views on the subject, then go on to provoke yet another shaft from the boy.

The younger son, Martin, was seventeen; a shy, very tall boy with red hair and pale red eyelashes opening wide on large, childlike eyes. Though he said little, and stammered when he did, his pale face registered every shift in the atmosphere with a high degree of sensitivity. His father ignored him, dismissing his few contributions to the talk with an impatient frown. He could hardly even bring himself to accept the boy’s agreeing with him against Rob, telling him on one occasion: “Do be quiet, Martin. You’re developing an unfortunate combination of pomposity and shrillness.” Turning to June with a smile he added: “I like to joke that our youngest is in grave danger of turning from a Martin into a Martinet!” June glanced at the boy: his face had flushed, but he said nothing, and she herself could think of nothing to say, though she would have liked to.

Meanwhile, the wife seemed utterly eclipsed in her husband’s presence. He treated her with a detached solicitousness, apparently regarding her as an invalid, measuring out her wine in half glasses, and chastising her when she came in from the kitchen bearing a tray laden with heavy bowls: “Hazel, I’ve told you if you insist on carrying on like some Bulgarian weight-lifter, you are going to be a cripple within five years.”

He turned to June: “My wife has arthritis in her spine. Martin, take the tray from your mother. Go on! Are you afraid it’ll snap your wrist or something?”

Rob and his girlfriend left after dinner to go off to a party, and June made her exit a little later. Paul saw her to the door.

“I hope it hasn’t bored you to dine with us
enfamiUe,”
he said, looking at her closely.

“Of course not. It’s been lovely.”

“Next time we’ll try to rustle up a spare man. That’ll make it more amusing for you, I dare say.”

She smiled blandly, reiterating that she’d had a lovely evening.

“Where’s your car?” he said, looking out at the forecourt.

“I walked. I always walk, when I can.”

The man turned back into the house: “Martin!” he shouted. “Come and walk our guest home.”

“Please don’t make him,” June said. “I’ll be fine. I have a torch. There’s even a moon . . .”

“Martin!” he called again, ignoring her.

Martin appeared, wearing a pair of running shoes with straggling, untied laces. Paul glanced at them: “God. Is there no fashion too crass for you?”

The boy bent down and tied the laces.

Outside it was chilly. Dew had fallen, glittering along the gravel driveway. The sloping fields with their black woods in every crevice were lit by the moon, rolling away to the dark horizon in pure brightness and shadow. Martin walked silently beside her, a tall, awkward-seeming presence. She felt for him in his tongue-tied shyness, and made an effort to converse despite her annoyance at having had him forced on her. She asked about his interests. He was monosyllabic at first, but gradually relaxed, and by the time they reached the end of the driveway he had become almost voluble; grateful, it appeared, to have found a sympathetic ear.

“Do you like Bruckner?” he asked suddenly as they crossed the road to the common.

“I like what I’ve read of her ..

“No, Bruckner, the composer.”

“Oh. I’m not sure I—”

“He’s my god. He’s completely misunderstood. Everyone thinks of him as this soft, dreamy composer, but he’s tough!”

Other enthusiasms followed: a mixture of composers, artists, and writers who had in common, according to Martin, a deceptive softness under which they were all “tough,” or “rock-hard,” or “hard as nails.” And several of them were also declared to be his “god.”

T he footpath entered the wood that occupied the middle part of the common.

“This is a bluebell wood,” June said.

“What’s that?”

“You’ve never seen a bluebell wood? You’re in for a surprise! Any day, I should think.”

A clattering of wings exploded from a tree ahead of them, sending a black silhouette whirring into the sky.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk. We’re waking the pheasants.”

They walked on in silence. It was very dark inside the wood, the ivy-wreathed trees snaking up against the moon, and June found herself glad of the boy’s company after all. When they arrived at her house she invited him in for a nightcap.

“Just a very quick one,” she said, immediately regretting the impulse. “I’m not good at staying up late.” Then, worried that this might have sounded unfriendly, added: “I’ll make you a hot toddy. I learned the recipe from a barman at the Closerie des Lilas. That’s a bar in Paris.”

He sat at her kitchen table while she put on the kettle and cut lemons. His eyes followed her, wide and innocent-looking in his oval face, which was mottled pink from the walk. He had fallen into his awkward silence again, and for a while she herself could think of nothing to say. She gave him the lemons to squeeze. Standing with her back to the range, she watched him in silence. His hands were very large, the long, angular fingers each with a glint of gold hair below the knuckle, the upper joints bending a little backward, as in the hands of angels in old paintings, as he pressed and twisted the lemon halves on the ridged glass cone of the squeezer.

He stayed perhaps fifteen minutes, most of the time just staring down into his steaming glass, but he looked happy to be there, and she found his presence relaxing. She had felt tired when they arrived but after he was gone she felt pleasantly alert and wakeful. Thinking, with a smile, of his “gods,” she went over to her piano and began rummaging through her old music books. There was no individual book of Bruckner’s, but in an ancient Schirmer’s Library miscellany she found a piece by him called
Erinnerung.
A note translated this as “Reminiscence” and described it as a very early piece, written long before his better-known orchestral work. She began to sight-read it. It wasn’t difficult at first: a simple, wandering melody for the right hand with slow minor chords for the left. But it grew harder as it progressed, and she lost her way. Even so, she had the feeling that if she could get properly back into practice, it was something she might be able to master. She went upstairs, leaving the piece open on the piano’s music stand.

An hour or so later, after she had finished reading and was just falling asleep, there was a loud, single knock at the door. Some lingering after-impression of the boy had been in her thoughts as she was drifting off and it didn’t occur to her to wonder whether it might be anyone but him. She went downstairs tying her dressing gown around her, and trying to think how to send him home immediately without hurting his feelings.

But it was the father.

' She stepped back from the doorway, barefoot on the tile floor of the kitchen.

“Hello,” he said. “May 1 come in?”

He entered the house, stooping under the lintel.

She looked at him warily.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to see you.”

“Why?”

He said nothing.

“Are you drunk?”

“Possibly. In a sense.”

He stood close to her, his tall, upright figure swaying just perceptibly. His cheeks, long and gaunt like tall shields slung from the high bones under his eyes, were flushed dark scarlet, his bluish-red lips set in a smile. She stepped back again, putting a hand on the kitchen table.

“Why are you here?”

“Because you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I believe you know.”

“This is utterly insane.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily disagree.”

“You’re mad. You’ve only just met me . . .”

“I don’t, anticipate a change of view.”

“ What about your wife?”

“Comatose. I administer her Dramamme myself. Admit you’re not altogether surprised to see me.”

“I
am
surprised. And not pleasantly.”

“Really?” He put his hand over hers. She tried to snatch it away but he pressed harder, pinning it to the table.

“Let go.”

His fingers encircled her hand, gripping it tight.

“Please let go of me, that hurts.”

“Does it?” He squeezed tighter.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. What do you think you’re doing?” With a violent twist of her body she wrenched herself free. “Get out of my house!”

He stood, eyeing her calmly.

“I see,” he said.

“Get out!”

“Willingly. As I’ve always held, though I’ve not had occasion to say it to a member of your sex before now, or not in these circumstances,
ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis.
Incidentally—” he turned from the doorway to face her with a crooked smile, “—I’m correct, am I not, in thinking you’re the woman who used to be married to Alan Houghton? Yes, I thought so. I’ve heard so much about you. I was at school with Alan. Nice chap in those days. Good night.”

For some time after he left she was in a state of explosive agitation. She had met some swine in her time but none quite like this. She sat at the kitchen table, fuming. Almost worse than his presumption in coming here was the idea of his knowing about her past—her marriage and God knows what else. It brought back a bitter aftertaste of that time: the treadmill of jealousy and sour triumph, the constant vague rage. She wondered if he knew about her escapade with Alan’s elder brother, and the thought that he probably did compelled her to revisit the mortifying memory of that little misadventure. In itself it had consisted of little more than a drunken night at the brother’s flat in Belgravia while Alan was away on business, but the surrounding circumstance—the widely known fact of Alan’s jealous rivalry with his more successful sibling, the disclosure of the event at a large family gathering where a nasty argument between the brothers about politics had led to Alan insinuating that the brother preferred men to women, only to have his own cuckoldry thrown in his face by way of evidence to the contrary, all this, combined with the incestuous flavor of the infidelity itself—had given the episode an almost mythically scandalous aura, and even to June herself it seemed to have occurred in a state of derangement, incomprehensible to her now, though the anguish it aroused in her whenever she thought of it remained as fresh and sharp as ever.

The next weekend was Easter. She was cleaning the house that Friday (there was no question of the pious Mrs. Dolfuss coming that week) when she heard a knock at the door.

It was Martin. In his hand he held a bunch of bluebells.

“I brought these for you.”

“Oh...”

The dogs were behind him, gazing up at her with their look of nervous enthusiasm, pink tongues lolling.

“I picked them over there, in the wood. I’ve been waiting for them to come out.”

“Well, that’s . . . sweet of you.”

“They’re the same color as your eyes.”

She gave a wan smile. The father’s visit was still fresh in her mind and for a moment she wondered if he and his younger son were quite as different from each other as she’d thought.

“I’ll find a vase for them,” she said. “Wait there.”

It seemed to her that an attitude of gracious but mildly severe composure was called for. She put the flowers in water and returned to the door.

“Listen, I’m touched, but you shouldn’t have done that. For one thing you’re not supposed to pick them—they’re protected. And for another—”

The boy was looking at her, his expression solemnly attentive. A breeze flapped the tail of his untucked shirt.

“For another, I’m old enough—I mean put it this way, I have a daughter practically your age. Do you understand me?”

He looked blank, but he nodded.

“Well, so . . .”

Again he looked at her expectantly.