The Water's Lovely (16 page)

Always able to rise to the occasion, he said, ‘Eva, may I introduce Ismay Sealand? Ismay, this is Eva Simber.'

‘Hello,' said Eva Simber.

‘Is she your girlfriend?' Ismay wouldn't look at her.

‘I suppose that describes our relationship,' said Andrew. ‘Yes, that's about it.' The girl gave a nervous giggle. ‘And now, if you'll excuse us, we're about to eat.'

Ismay was past dignity, past face-saving. ‘And that is to be it? We part like that? After two years together?'

‘Better than making a scene, isn't it?'

She would have made a scene. The crowds wouldn't have mattered. The girl and what she thought would have mattered not at all. But at that moment a group of people, close together, talking at the tops of their voices, pushed their way between them, leaving Andrew and the girl on one side, Ismay on the other. When they had passed she was alone and the other two were inside the restaurant.

She stumbled away, afraid she would fall, but clinging now to an upright, a bus stop or parking notice. A woman on her own said to her, ‘Are you all right?'

Ismay nodded, unable to speak. She summoned up enough voice to ask a taxi driver to take her home to Clapham and, huddled on the back seat, gave way to tears and then to bitter sobbing.

Though making it a principle not to use the key to Ismay's flat but always to ring the bell, Edmund had tried the bell push, tried it repeatedly, and on the doorstep, tried calling her on his mobile before letting himself in. He had come back for the remaining possessions Heather had left behind. She herself was spending the evening with his mother as part of their campaign to make Irene like her prospective daughter-in-law.

Always neat and methodical, Heather had left the things she wanted in three tidy stacks on the bed in her old bedroom. Edmund was packing them into the suitcase he had brought when he heard a key in the lock and Ismay come in.

He remembered how she usually danced in, threw her things down, bounced into a chair to relax. The sounds he could hear were those of a very old woman, returning home with heavy bags from a shopping trip. She didn't fall but he thought he heard her drop down on to the floor.
He went quickly out of the room, calling out so that she shouldn't be frightened, ‘Ismay, it's me, it's Edmund.'

She was prone on the floor, her face turned away from him. He knelt down beside her. ‘What is it?'

Instead of answering, she said in a muffled voice crying had made hoarse, ‘I want to die.'

‘Andrew? What has he said to you? Ismay, turn over, please. Look at me.'

‘Leave me alone. I want to die.'

‘You can't stay there,' he said, and more firmly, the nurse taking charge, ‘Get up. Tell me what's happened. Come on, get up.'

She did, turning to him a face that frightened him, it was so ugly with grief and pain and terror. He had never found her attractive – she was too fey, too slight and delicate, her features too childlike for his taste – but he could tell many men would. Hers was the fashion model type, impossibly slender with thistledown hair and bushbaby eyes. All that was gone. As she staggered to her feet, fell on to the sofa, he saw that she was skeletal, her face that old woman's whose stumbling he had heard. She had become her own mother. He sat down beside her and took her in his arms.

For a few moments she let him hold her. Then she moved away, put her head in her hands, her fingertips pressed deeply into the skin. When she took them away and shook back her hair, she seemed a little restored. Without waiting to be asked again, she told him about the evening she had spent.

‘He said it was my fault, Edmund. That he'd gone, I mean. He said I preferred having you and Heather here to him. And then this girl came.'

Edmund resisted the impulse to ask if she was thin and fair and wearing very high heels. Why let Ismay know her story wasn't a surprise to him?

‘I don't think she knew about me. It doesn't matter anyway. She's called Eva something. I don't know. It's a name you give to lions.'

‘Sheba?' hazarded Edmund.

‘Simba, I think. That doesn't matter either. What am I going to do? What can I do? I can't live without him.'

Six months before Edmund would have thought this declared intention, common to discarded lovers, an absurd exaggeration which in fact amounted to very little. But now, about to be married, he asked himself if he could live without Heather and thought that if it wouldn't be utterly impossible it would be dreadful and its extent perhaps not imaginable. The very heart of loneliness, the depths of despair.

‘She came up to him,' Ismay said, crying again. ‘She touched him. On the arm. I thought I'd die. I wish I had. Oh, I wish I had.'

‘You can't be alone here. Not the state you're in. I'll call Heather. We'll both stay here with you.'

Unhappy at the prospect of spending hours alone with her prospective daughter-in-law, Irene had summoned Marion to ‘join us for supper'. She arrived early, bearing her usual gifts she had made herself, in this case chocolate fudge. Calling on Mr Hussein an hour before, in the belief than an elderly Moslem gentleman would be at a loose end at six in the evening, she had found him having a patriarchal orange juice with three younger men round the ebony table. One of them let her in. He was enormous, a good foot taller than Marion, with luxuriant black hair and beard. She had never liked very tall men. They intimidated her. The other two were smaller but not much. The three of them with Mr Hussein filled up the little room and there was nowhere for Marion to sit.

‘May I introduce my sons?' Mr Hussein indicated one after another with a wave of the hand. ‘Khwaja, Mir and Zafar. This is Miss Melrose.'

‘Melville,' said Marion, who for some reason had supposed him childless.

Accustomed to women standing about while they sat, none of the Hussein men got up to give her a seat. Marion didn't care. She eyed them and while she was wondering if one of them might be single or between marriages, their father began telling the tale of how she had given him ham for Christmas, including the detail of how he carried it to the kitchen on the end of a kebab skewer. This was the first Marion knew that in doing so she had committed a solecism. Khwaja, Mir and Zafar all laughed uproariously and Mir (who had also shuddered) slapped Mr Hussein on the back.

‘My dad's a real comedian,' he said, not looking at Marion. ‘He ought to be on the telly.'

‘I have had my offers,' said Mr Hussein mysteriously, and then to Marion, ‘You can see yourself out, can't you?'

She would never go there again, Marion was thinking as she sipped Irene's Bristol Cream. There was someone she wouldn't waste her morphine on. What would be the use when he was so palsy-walsy with those sons of his? Heather came down at twenty-five to eight.

‘I think you've met,' Irene said.

‘Briefly,' said Marion, and Heather said, ‘Hello, Marion. How are you?'

‘People who make that enquiry', Irene said in a conversational tone, ‘don't expect a truthful answer, do they? They should, of course. Otherwise there's no point in asking. But no, they expect to be told that you're fine even if you're at death's door.'

When Heather could find nothing to say, Marion remarked that true though this was, Irene must never
forget that not everyone was as clever as she was. Irene favoured her with a smile and a deprecating shake of the head.

‘I do actually try to answer that enquiry truthfully. I believe in speaking the truth, you see. When I'm asked how I am – and I'm usually unwell – I see no point in lying about it.' To Heather she said, ‘I won't offer you sherry. I know you young people haven't any time for it.' Ignoring Marion's affronted look at being thus excluded from youthfulness, she told an anecdote to illustrate her point. ‘Imagine, my sister and her husband went to a restaurant the other evening and when they asked for sherry the staff – not much more than teenagers actually – had never heard of it.'

‘Perhaps I could have a glass of wine,' said Heather, having noticed an opened bottle of Sauvignon.

Her expression that of a woman who has never before been asked for drink or food by a guest, Irene said, ‘Oh, of course. Help yourself. You're practically one of the family now, aren't you? Well, in a way,' she added.

Marion giggled, rather in the manner of the Hussein brothers. ‘I suppose you're a sort of common-law wife. Can you describe yourself like that if you're filling in a form?'

‘There's no such thing as a common-law wife.' Heather had picked up this piece of information from Andrew. ‘You're either a wife or you're not.'

‘And you're not?'

‘Not until next Saturday,' said Heather.

‘You're getting
married
?'

‘I thought Irene might have told you.'

This was the first time she had called her future mother-in-law by her Christian name and the first time the marriage had been discussed, though Edmund had told his mother a week before. Irene looked displeased at
the familiarity but realised she could hardly protest. In silence she served their first course, carrot and coriander soup. The bread was Poilane at five pounds for half a loaf, as Irene told her guests. Heather was prevented from praising it by the ringing – or playing of a well-known phrase of Vivaldi – of a mobile. Heather fished the phone out of her bag and was about to answer it when Irene said, ‘Oh, really, not when we're eating,
please
.'

Thus Edmund was treated to the well-known tones of his mother saying penetratingly, ‘It's quite appalling the way some people can't be separated from a phone for five minutes.'

‘Are you all right?' he said.

Heather said to Irene and Marion, ‘Excuse me. I won't be long,' and carried the mobile into a corner of the room. ‘I'm fine. What's wrong?'

He told her.

‘Of course we must both stay with her.'

‘She won't have it,' Edmund says. ‘She – I don't want to say it over the phone. I'm on the bus. She's got sleeping pills and she's taken one. No, it's OK, I've taken the rest away. She'll just sleep all night. I'll be home in – well, half an hour.'

Irene had put their main course on the table. ‘I suppose that was my son?'

‘He's at my sister's. He went to fetch the rest of my clothes.'

‘If he had to phone, why on earth couldn't he phone here on my phone?'

Tired of parrying Irene's questions, Heather said, ‘I don't know. He just didn't.' She fell back on what she thought must be a sure-fire mollifier. ‘This is very good.'

It was hard to tell if Irene was pleased or not. ‘Praise from that quarter', she said to Marion, ‘is praise indeed.
She's a professional cook, you know. Well, in a hospital, not a restaurant.'

‘She'll put us all to shame then.'

Marion's remark went down badly. Irene frowned at Heather as if she had made it. They had pears in red wine. Heather ate in silence, was offered no more wine, while Irene and Marion talked about Avice Conroy and Marion's job.

‘You are an amanuensis,' Irene was saying when Edmund's key was heard in the lock.

He came into the room, said, ‘Hello, Mother,' and to Heather in the sort of tone that is warmer than an endearment, ‘Hello.' To Marion he nodded. Irene immediately asked him if he had had any dinner.

‘It doesn't matter,' he said.

‘But of course it matters. You mustn't miss meals because of …' Because of what wasn't specified but it was plain she meant this omission was Heather's fault. ‘I'll get you something at once. Chicken? Soup first? Or some of Marion's delicious fudge?'

‘I don't want anything, thank you, Mother. If you've finished, Heather, shall we go upstairs?'

‘She hasn't had coffee,' said Irene. ‘I was going to offer her a glass of dessert wine. I know how fond of wine she is.'

Heather got up, said, ‘Thank you for having me,' like a guest at a children's party. They went upstairs. In their bedroom she sat down on the bed, her hands clutched together in her lap.

‘What's the matter? You're not letting her get to you, are you?'

Heather made no answer. ‘Have you ever read
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
?'

‘I saw the film. I'm not much of a reader. Nor are you, though. Why do you ask?'

‘Oh, I don't know.' She did know, he thought, but didn't want to say. ‘I had to read it when I was at school. Not for O levels, it was before that. I was nearly fourteen.'

Puzzled, Edmund said, ‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘When you don't read much, things you do read stick in your mind. But it doesn't matter. I'm going to bed. Are you coming?'

For the first time since he had met her he sensed in her an absence of trust. It seemed to him that perfect confidence had existed between them but did so no longer. She hadn't lied but she had hidden the truth and for a little while – only a very little while, he hoped, only this evening – she had separated herself from him.

The man who had talked to her at speed dating had so humiliated her that she considered giving the whole thing up. He was the third one she had spoken to. He attracted her not at all but he was there, standing alone with a glass in his hand, and she approached him because all the others had paired off. Once more she introduced herself as Pam and he said his name was Keith. The tone he used when he said it was dry and condescending as if she hardly had a right to ask him.

‘Have you ever been to speed dating before?' It had been her opening gambit at the two previous encounters.

He didn't reply. He looked her up and down. ‘Bit over the hill for this sort of thing, aren't you? What makes someone like you want to come here?'

She felt herself blush shamefully. ‘I'm fifty-six. How old are you?'