The Essence of the Thing Page 14

  ‘Terrific cake.’

  ‘Least I could do.’

  ‘Show me this hat.’

  Nicola fetched the hat.

  ‘Put it on.’

  She did as bidden.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Susannah. ‘Delightful. I’m just trying to visualise the whole effect. Fishnet tights and all. Well, all I can say is, it must have given him a right old turn. No wonder he was acting so cold and indifferent. He was actually steaming.’

  Nicola seemed to consider this proposition for a moment and then she gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘It’s over, Susannah,’ she said. ‘It really is. I know it now. It’s over.’

  Susannah looked suitably grave. ‘Do you mean,’ she said carefully, ‘that you no longer love him?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicola. ‘I mean that my loving him—if I do—has no significance any longer. If ever it had. It’s so insignificant that even I can see it to be so. Everything I feel, everything I am, is swallowed up by Jonathan’s indifference. Even if his indifference is assumed. Especially if it is assumed.’

  ‘Still,’ said Susannah, ‘he did come here. Doesn’t that indicate something besides indifference? He needn’t really have come here, in person, unless—’

  ‘I’ve thought about that too. Do you know why he came here? Because he was actually hoping to assure himself that everything was right between us: I mean, nice, calm, dignified. Even friendly. No hard feelings. In other words, he had a very slightly bad conscience. He wanted to be told that he’d done the right thing, as well as merely believing it himself. He wanted to feel good. That’s why he came here.’

  ‘Poor old Jonathan,’ said Susannah. ‘His back is against the wall whatever he does.’

  ‘Still, he has his work, to take his mind off. One needn’t feel too sorry for him. He only notices the wall at weekends, and possibly now and then in the evenings. Somehow my work never seems to do as much for me, quite.’

  ‘We women still have a lot of catching up to do.’

  ‘We have to learn to be more single-minded.’

  ‘Tougher. More ambitious. Ruthless.’

  ‘I’ve been shortlisted for that Scunthorpe thing, by the way. I have an interview on Friday week.’

  ‘You won’t get it, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘I wonder how they’re getting on round at Cardamon Road. Or whether they are. We might pop round there tomorrow and check it out—what do you say?’

  ‘I might give them a hand.’

  ‘That seems a bit much.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  And they did.

  The consequence was that Nicola did indeed give them a hand; on two of the following evenings she went round after work and did a large amount of cleaning, and on two of the evenings following these she gave a hand with the painting, too, and so did Guy, after a fashion.

  What they were doing was putting white emulsion straight onto the original in situ 1950s moderne wallpaper, the Festival of Britain–style pattern of which began soon to peep through, creating a most interesting new wall-treatment effect at a time when every other previously dreamed up by decorators (ragging, marbling, you-name-it) had been consigned to the vieux jeu bin. But they agreed that they would divulge the secret of it to no one, and it remained unique, not only in fashionable Clapham but in the entire 0171 telephone exchange area.

  60

  If Sam had contemplated pulling in his horns, it had still to be admitted that they’d been stuck as far out as horns can go.

  The house had a basement, which he had renovated to form a kitchen and dark-room for his and Helen’s photography: they being dedicated amateurs.

  ‘Although, of course,’ said Sam, ‘there’s not the slightest hope of our finding time for it until Chloe shapes up, which event— extrapolating from present trends—I do not anticipate before the end of the century.’

  Where Susannah and Geoffrey had a kitchen, they had a conservatory, but the rest of the ground floor was occupied by the same kind of knocked-through sitting room, Hodgkin-less as it might be.

  Now it was Friday evening and everyone was in there drinking supermarket Côtes du Rhône and discussing Nicola’s furniture.

  ‘She can have Chloe’s bed,’ said Sam. ‘Chloe’s still using a cot. She won’t be needing that bed for the foreseeable. I just need a hand moving it up the stairs, when you’re ready, Geoffrey.’

  ‘Right away,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean this very minute,’ said Sam crossly. ‘I mean, let’s have just one more glass first.’

  He poured out some more wine, and opened another bottle as well, and sat down again.

  The women were all sitting together on the sofa, Chloe— dressed in the rabbit-printed frock—crawling over their collective knees and being saved from falling by whichever hand was nearest at the relevant time, and Guy was sitting pathetically in a corner looking at an atlas and drinking orange squash.

  Susannah spoke up. ‘What about the floor?’ she said. ‘Do you need a rug?’

  ‘A rug,’ said Sam, as if he’d never heard of such a thing.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Nicola hastily. ‘I don’t need one.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Helen. ‘You must have a rug.’

  ‘She can have Chloe’s,’ said Sam. ‘Chloe can do without. She doesn’t know the difference, do you, Chloe?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chloe.

  She was on the very verge of talking: she was already using sentences, but had picked up only a few essential words; the rest she improvised. If asked a question she usually said yeah.

  After some discussion it was agreed that in lieu of the first week’s rent Nicola herself would see to a floor covering and something for the windows, and Susannah promised to take her around the shops the next day in order to accomplish this feat.

  ‘She’ll need a wardrobe, of course,’ said Helen.

  Everyone’s face fell. Here at last was an insoluble problem: what on earth should they do?

  ‘I know where there’s a wardrobe,’ said Guy.

  He did, too. It was usually on the pavement outside a very dismal junk shop which he passed on the way to and from school every day.

  ‘It probably isn’t there now,’ said Susannah.

  ‘It’s been there for weeks,’ said Guy. ‘It’s always there.’

  ‘It must be very ugly,’ said Susannah.

  ‘Oh, yes, it is,’ Guy agreed. ‘But it is a wardrobe.’

  So on the way to Guy’s riding lesson the next morning they checked it out. It was still there, and it was very ugly, but they got it very cheap, and the vendor agreed to deliver it that evening, which he did.

  ‘She’ll want a chair, of course,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And a table.’

  ‘She’s got those in the kitchen,’ said Sam. ‘Two chairs, in point of fact. Two.’

  ‘I don’t need any more,’ said Nicola. ‘Truly. The less furniture the better.’

  What else could she say, could she truly, miserably feel, who had walked away for ever from a discreetly magnificent bed, Empire style, bought in glad hope at a Liberty’s sale: to say nothing of all the rest?

  Then Sam and Geoffrey went upstairs to move the bed; the women came up to see how it looked; Nicola lay on it to convince them that she found it comfortable; Guy lay on it too in order to see for himself; and then they discussed bedding.

  ‘I’ve got my own sheets,’ said Nicola.

  So the rest they managed to find, and Helen promised to make available some of the kitchen crockery and utensils. They were all sorted out at last, and Nicola was to move in on Sunday.

  61

  A few more letters had come for Nicola: Jonathan hesitated. Hadn’t she mentioned something about moving? But she hadn’t given him an address. And he hadn’t asked for it. He quite literally didn’t know where she was, unless she was still with Susannah. Well, he’d just hav
e to forward the mail to Susannah’s house. He sat down with the letters and began to re-address them c/o Mrs Geoffrey Dawlish.

  By the end of the week, the supply seemed to have dried up: she’d evidently notified the Post Office; he wouldn’t need to take care of her mail any longer. And next week he’d finish rearranging the mortgage and he would pay her off—so to speak—and that would be the lot.

  Except for those boxes in the wardrobe. Presumably she would soon collect them as promised. And then she’d really be gone, thoroughly and finally gone. Jonathan had a rare instant of unflinching honesty. How did it feel? To have her gone, thoroughly, finally? Oh, it felt wretched, wretched. And that could only be a trick of the light, a devilish deception, a cross one had to bear for having done what was right. It had been simple-minded of him to expect that he should feel, as well as be, right. That surely would come. Soon he would no longer feel that blank, odd, wrong sensation when he came into the sitting room and saw the empty mantelpiece—soon he would think of something to replace the vanished—banished?— dogs: he couldn’t for the moment imagine what, precisely. Soon he would wake up feeling himself, his soul not only his, not only private and inviolate, but intact and securely in its proper place. Everything would be, and would be felt to be, clear and tidy and absolutely right.

  In any case, the wretchedness he might feel now—which was only a trick of the light—was preferable by far and even welcome when compared to the certain and enduring hell of marriage as it might very well turn out to be. As it was altogether likely to be. Jonathan knew now what he had for a very long time suspected, and had turned away from: that human life, at least the way one lived it here and now, was a fraud, driven by irrational and potentially destructive forces, and the only reasonable and safe course was to minimise the chances of harming and being harmed. He was beginning to arrive at the quietist position, joylessly, regretfully, wretchedly. He even glimpsed the possibility that there was some factor he had overlooked, but he did not stop to ask what it might be.

  He suddenly, unaccountably, remembered the beautiful ruby ring. Where did that fit into the scheme of things? One had to admire the resourcefulness of those dread irrational forces: there were no lengths to which they might not go in order to lure you into hell. On their behalf rubies were mined, traded, cut and polished, set, traded again; insured, inherited; he could almost smile at the fate that had brought this one, so anomalously, into his hand. Issa would end up getting it after all. He could just see—for a very brief, agonised instant—that in point of fact (now he came, for the first time, to think of it) Nicola would have loved it. But this detail, of course, was only there to compound the irony.

  What was it she’d said about compound interest? What should he have said and done that he had failed to say and do? And he remembered her red—ruby-red—fingernails. She—this was another irony—had moved on into a new life, and he was still in the old one! Wretched, and thinking of her—although he did not love her, and could not marry her: and more sure than ever that sexual desire (for he had to admit to that, too) was the most irrational and destructive force of all, the drug that induced one into the very worst mistakes one could ever make, mistakes whose consequences went on for all of time. It was unspeakable. Better this misery than that. Jonathan, at last, embraced the rational misery he had chosen. So be it, he said to himself. And then he got on with some work.

  62

  ‘Perhaps I should do it with gloss.’

  ‘No, emulsion’s okay. Do it with emulsion. Emulsion’s better.’

  ‘And we’ve got emulsion. Emulsion’s easier.’

  Nicola had just moved in, and she and Susannah and Helen were discussing the wardrobe, which all agreed should be painted white. Otherwise the room looked quite nice, with maize matting on the floor and split-cane blinds at the windows. Nicola had bought a simple reading lamp in the same shop, with a paper shade.

  ‘You need a plant,’ said Susannah. ‘I’ll get you one for a housewarming present. And you haven’t got a radio either. You can borrow mine from the workroom if you like. Let’s go home now and have some dinner and I’ll see if there are any more bits and pieces you could use.’

  ‘You’re so kind,’ said Nicola faintly. ‘I’m sure I’ve got all the necessities.’ She wanted to live like an anchorite now, stripped of everything inessential.

  She returned later that night with a radio, some tea towels, a travelling alarm clock, an extra pillow, a tin-opener, a corkscrew and a bottle of wine.

  ‘Now promise me,’ said Susannah in the car, ‘that if it turns out to be horrible in there, you’ll come straight back to us.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Nicola.

  ‘But promise,’ Susannah insisted. ‘After all, you never know. Sam’s a sardonic old sod and Helen can be awfully shrewish.’

  ‘But Chloe’s a pet,’ said Nicola. ‘It’ll be fine. I must go in and get straightened out. Work again tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Susannah sadly. ‘Take care, sweetheart.’

  Because she was truly concerned about Nicola. She felt as strongly as ever she had, that what had happened to Nicola ought not to have happened, that it was as completely unjust as such a thing could be: that what had happened was truly wrong. She said all this to Geoffrey when she got home.

  ‘Well, if it’s as wrong as all that,’ he said, ‘then it’s right.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  ‘Well, if Jonathan could perpetrate so abominable an injustice, she’s well out of it. It’s a jolly good thing he did. Otherwise she might have been shacked up with the monster for ever.’

  ‘But if he hadn’t done it he wouldn’t be a monster.’

  ‘Oh, you mean he became a monster after he did it. Or at least, while he did it. That he wasn’t one before.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘I mean, logically, he had to be a monster before he did it, or he couldn’t have done it. There has to be the will before the action can be performed.’

  ‘Well, he could have just had the monstrous will but then thought better of the action and not performed it.’

  ‘So you’d rather he were a devious hypocritical secretive monster.’

  ‘No, I’d rather he were a reformed monster who has seen the error of his wishes and not turned them into actions.’

  ‘It seems a lot to ask of a monster.’

  ‘What’s the point of being a monster if one doesn’t reform oneself?’

  ‘What’s the point of being a monster if one does?’

  ‘He shouldn’t have pretended not to be a monster to start with. That would have been best.’

  ‘Yes, well.’

  ‘Why are men so awful?’

  ‘Because they’re bipeds.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just think about it. What’s the really startling difference between men and dogs, or cats, or any other male mammal?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You see? Vulnerable.’

  ‘It’s tragic, really.’

  ‘That’s life, human-style.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it.’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  63

  ‘Nicola! Are you up there?’

  Nicola, paintbrush in hand, went out onto the landing. It was Sam, coming up the stairs with a sizable pot-plant shrouded in florist’s wrapping paper.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Just brought this up for you. Guy delivered it this afternoon while you were still out at work. Dashed useful child, that. Unlike some. Where shall I put it?’

  He was invited to come in and Nicola took the plant and unwrapped it.

  It was a white pelargonium, perfectly beautiful, with a card from Susannah.

  ‘What a dear friend she is,’ murmured Nicola.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘I dare say she is. You women go in for that sort of thing, don’t you?’

  Nicola wasn’t sure what sort of thing was meant here, but said that she supposed they did, and put the plant on the mantelpiece above th
e unlit gas fire.

  Sam looked around the room with his usual beady-eyed glare. ‘Looks all right, doesn’t it?’ he said proudly—his being the least of the efforts which had been expended upon it.

  Nicola smiled to herself and agreed with him, and recommenced her painting of the wardrobe.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam approvingly, ‘that’s the ticket. If it doesn’t move, paint it white. My father was in the regular army, did you know that? No, don’t get the idea that he was officer class. Up through the ranks. Staff sergeant. Bloody hell. Still, he survived and so did I.’ He looked around the room again. ‘Not exactly overburdened with possessions, are you?’ he said.

  Nicola agreed that she was not, and was tempted to leave it at that, but then relented. ‘I’ve abandoned them,’ she explained. ‘But in fact there are a few more to come. I have to fetch them from Notting Hill sometime soon.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Sam. ‘Notting Hill.’

  What more need one say? Nicola felt a sudden wrenching in her stomach. Notting Hill. The pain could even now (it’s over) intensify in this way, as if renewing itself, as if resurrecting itself, and tighten its grip with a force more terrible still than before.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ said Sam—aware, perhaps merely at some subliminal level, of the change in the atmosphere—‘I don’t know if you’ve anything particular lined up in the way of food, but if you haven’t then Helen suggested you might eat with us this evening. We dine at around eight o’clock.’

  Nicola thanked him and said that she would bring a bottle of wine which she happened to have handy, and Sam, looking around the room one last time as if to catch sight after all of some enviable item of luxury, some objet de—doubtful—virtu, withdrew.

  Nicola went on with the painting. There was one thing about the smell of fresh paint: even if it reminded one of happier— midsummer-sky-blue—times, it was still an encouraging, optimistic, even joyful sort of smell; she hardly knew how she could have borne her situation, here, now, without it.