Heat Wave

  Pauline took a keen interest in all this, but realized that she was irrelevant. The students did not even see her, immersed in their own entrancing world of outrage. Harry saw her, daily, but recognized the house and its occupants simply as the reliable anchorage to which he returned when it was convenient in search of sustenance and recuperation. He would breeze in, exuberant or uncommunicative according to his state of mind, knowing nothing of her protracted days with their many hours in which to consider his alternative existence.

  Pauline and Teresa patrol the pond in the park, feeding the ducks.

  ‘Daddy?’ says Teresa with animation, staring across the pond.

  ‘No,’ says Pauline, ‘that’s someone else’s daddy.’

  Your daddy is at Broadcasting House right now, which is a large building somewhere off Oxford Street, I’m told. Or on the other hand he may not be. He may be whooping it up in a pub with some of these intimate associates I do not know or he may be bent studiously over a book in the library of the British Museum or he may be in bed with this person Clare something who has rung up on several occasions lately and prefers not to leave a message. I do not rightly know where your daddy is. I note that most of your friends’ mothers do know where their husbands are, pretty well, which is beginning to give me pause for thought, though your daddy becomes petulant and aggrieved when I murmur words to this effect. Your daddy points out that he is a brilliant and thrusting young man – he puts it slightly differently but that is what he means – much in demand, and that he cannot be expected to account for his every move. Your daddy implies that my concern is suffocating and proprietorial. When I am stung into making reference to an episode we will not go into here he looks wearily reproachful and says he thought that was dead and buried now. I am made to feel errant and unreasonable which is quite an achievement on his part because it is clear enough to me that the boot is on the other foot. So I end up confused, not knowing quite where I am – along with not knowing at all where he is. I begin to wonder if perhaps it is all in my mind, if perhaps I am indeed becoming slightly paranoid – that is a word which has been used when your daddy is feeling particularly self-righteous. So I do not press the point, and your daddy usually ends up making love to me because he knows full well that will shut me up.

  I love your daddy, unfortunately. None of this would arise if I didn’t, I presume. What I am feeling these days is one of the appalling side-effects of love. At least I suppose love is the right word. This too gives me pause for thought because what I feel for you is also generally known as love but it is profoundly different from what I feel for your daddy. I would kill anyone who laid a hand on you but where your daddy is concerned there are circumstances under which I suspect that I might kill him. I am obsessed with your daddy. I think about him most of the time. But I am quite clear-eyed about him. I see that he is egotistic and self-regarding and entrepreneurial. When I consider your daddy with detachment I do not entirely like him. I think he is clever and stimulating but I do not altogether admire him. I love him, which is different. Good sense and indeed self-interest seem to be set aside. And yet I am an intelligent woman, or at least I believed I was. I cannot contemplate the thought of life without your daddy. I cannot contemplate the thought of him being with anyone but me. And this means that your daddy always has the upper hand. He can defuse me with a word or a look.

  Take last weekend. We were going to drive to the coast and have a picnic up on the downs. You are partial to picnics. So am I, come to that. We were looking forward to this outing, both of us. And then on Friday evening, late, long after you were in bed, your daddy recalled suddenly that he had not remembered to mention that he was going to have to go to London because there was this symposium at UCL which he really could not afford to miss. I protested. I dare say there was an extra edge to my protestations because last week there had been one of those phone calls from this person Clare something who is so oddly averse to leaving messages. Perhaps your daddy was aware of this edge because he was unusually contrite, unusually anxious to propitiate. He got us both a drink and talked about this plan he has to take a house in France for the summer and he looked at me with that look that unsteadies me entirely. He looked and I was unsteadied and then we went to bed, but not to sleep. So it goes.

  Teresa has lifted Luke down from the fence and they are now coming back along the track, very slowly, at Luke’s pace, with many stops and starts as Luke pauses to examine a leaf or a blade of grass, falls over, sits down for a while. Teresa waits for him, patiently in attendance. She looks towards the cottages and becomes suddenly alert. A door bangs. Maurice has appeared and strolls towards them, a cup of coffee in his hand. Taking a breather, it would seem. Pauline watches for a moment and then reaches abruptly to switch on her computer. She starts to sort through a pile of correspondence.

  Pauline lies in bed. The bed is striped with thin brilliant bars of sunlight. It is early morning, and the shutters are closed, but the light still pours through. Teresa is asleep. Harry has risen early to work. His typewriter pecks away in the next room – peck, peck, peck, then ping and shunt, then peck, peck, peck again. That is the only sound – that and the endless rasp of insects outside. It is very quiet here in the house in France, which is turning out to be as she had expected in some ways but not in others.

  She had not understood about Mrs Gatz. Harry has not exactly taken this house – rented it, paid cash for it. He has been lent it by Mrs Gatz. Mrs Gatz is rich. She is a patron. She patronizes those who are up and coming – academics, writers, artists. Harry met her in the States, apparently, and is now included in her constituency of patronage. Mrs Gatz herself occupies a much bigger house nearby – a sort of small château indeed – and some of the patronized are installed there with her. Harry and Pauline have been allocated this house, on account of Teresa, no doubt (it is apparent that Mrs Gatz is not all that enthusiastic about children). Thus they have a degree of privacy and distance from the fervent life of the château, but Harry is expected to appear there with regularity, to join the late-morning gatherings round the swimming pool and the long evening drinking sessions on the terrace. And Pauline also, by extension. Those patronized have certain obligations. Mrs Gatz has thoughtfully fixed up a girl from the village who will come in to baby-sit, but the girl is fifteen, bovine by disposition and patently of low intelligence. Teresa hates her and Pauline is uneasy about her, so she does not accompany Harry very much in the evenings. She sits here in the house and drinks some of the vin du pays provided and thinks about the ways in which this summer in France is not turning out quite how she had hoped.

  It is not exactly the family holiday Harry had seemed to be proposing. It is not the rare opportunity for them to spend time together, freed from the demands of the university and Harry’s relentless diary. It is indeed the occasion for Harry to get down to some work, and that of course is the purpose of Mrs Gatz’s generous patronage. She is a facilitator. She is in the business of facilitating production by the young and promising. They are to write and think and paint and sit around brilliantly exchanging ideas and thereby entertaining Mrs Gatz, who is easily bored.

  So Harry gets up early and pecks away vigorously at the typewriter. The pile of typescript rises, and with it Harry’s spirits. Harry is having a good time. He loves the place, he enjoys the vivacious company up at the château, he is amused by Mrs Gatz. ‘This is the life …’ he says to Pauline, as he wanders barefoot on the cool tiled floors of the sun-dazed house. ‘I want to stay here for ever, don’t you?’ says he, reaching for her across the bed when he has tumbled in at midnight after one of those starlit evenings on the flower-hung terrace of the château.

  No, Pauline would not like to stay here for ever, but it seems churlish to put a damper on Harry’s exuberance. Harry is gregarious and convivial. Also, as he frequently points out, becoming at these moments serious and less exuberant, he is getting so much out of this – rubbing his ideas up against those of others, trading interests and opinions.
There is the Harvard economist with whom he spars so productively and the quirky woman novelist and the brilliant twenty-five-year-old Indian philosopher. The recipients of Mrs Gatz’s patronage are various and the population of the château is a shifting one. Each week there is an injection of fresh blood, while other members of the party vanish without further ado. Harry always seems to be on familiar terms with everyone, but Pauline is often at a loss, on her infrequent visits, when she is confronted with a new array of glittering performers, some of whom she eyes with misgiving.

  It would of course be absurd to have such misgivings about Mrs Gatz, who is fifty plus and therefore exempt, though admittedly striking still with her coiled platinum hair, her pneumatic sun-tanned body packed into a white satin bathing costume or draped in Italian silks, and her freight of gold chains and bangles. Harry is now one of those who call Mrs Gatz Irene. He is summoned to her side, and they walk around the garden together, or sit apart by the pool, Harry leaning towards her in intimate eloquent discourse and Mrs Gatz occasionally throwing her head back to laugh uproariously.

  Harry thinks Mrs Gatz is a hoot, a character – so he tells Pauline. Incredible woman, he says, grinning at some private reminiscence.

  What Mrs Gatz thinks of Harry is more opaque. It is on this that Pauline reflects as she lies in bed in the early morning, hearing the insects and Harry’s pecking typewriter. ‘We don’t see enough of you, my dear,’ said Mrs Gatz yesterday, pausing on a tour of the poolside. ‘But of course you have the little girl to cope with.’ Her glance strays to Harry, who is sunbathing on a lilo, talking to the recently arrived Mexican sculptress, whose sleek black head bobs out of the water alongside. ‘Anyway, Harry has been the life and soul of the party.’ She looks again at Pauline, thoughtfully. Mrs Gatz has small black shiny eyes; the effect is that of being inspected by a bird – an impersonal scrutiny, perhaps with a view to action of some kind. ‘He’s quite something, your husband, isn’t he? I dare say he leads you a dance.’ She pauses, seems about to continue, and then does not. She takes a cigarette from the pocket of her towelling robe, lights it, inhales deeply. ‘Well, good luck, my dear,’ she says, and moves on.

  It is of this that Pauline thinks, lying under the stripes of morning sunshine. She thinks about the attractive process of strangling Mrs Gatz, of drowning her in the turquoise swimming pool. In due course, in the fullness of time, she will think about Harry.

  ‘Hi!’ calls Teresa. ‘Come and talk to us. We’re bored.’ She is in the garden with Luke. Pauline has waved from her bathroom window. Luke stares up and beams.

  Pauline joins them on the grass. This is supposed to be a lawn but it is a perfunctory one because too infrequently mown. The flower borders are similarly shaggy, stands of magenta phlox elbowed by clumps of evening primrose and lupins, all of them interwoven with goosegrass and bindweed. Over the years Pauline has attempted to curb and control the garden and has been both exasperated and awed by its tenacity. Green stuff pours from the ground in a seasonal flood, indiscriminate and unstoppable, and then declines into a sulky winter detritus of brown stems and blackened leaf mould. And Pauline recognizes that her inability to make much of a mark upon this identifies her occupancy of World’s End for the dilettante affair that it is. None of the previous residents would have allowed this disorder. They were in the business of obstructing the forces of nature.

  So Pauline and Teresa sprawl on the grass while Luke makes forays into the fringes of rampant growth. Teresa has been idly plaiting withered iris leaves. She has made Luke a sort of hat, which he is now gleefully destroying.

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember a place in France with a swimming pool,’ says Pauline.

  ‘No. When?’

  ‘You were two.’

  ‘I remember a place somewhere with a black dog that I was frightened of,’ Teresa offers.

  ‘That was later. Much later. Bristol.’

  They look at one another, speculatively, each of them considering a shuffled pack of images, some of which are shared, but with skewed and incommunicable vision.

  ‘The turquoise swimming pool was in Lot-et-Garonne,’ says Pauline. ‘You were more impressed with it than I was. It sprang to mind, for some reason. The weather, I dare say. We should get Luke one of these plastic paddling pools.’

  ‘I’ll ask Maurice to bring one back from London.’

  ‘Maurice is going to London again?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Teresa. Her face has taken on a shuttered look. She does not look at Pauline. ‘Just for a couple of days.’

  Pauline wanders around the house. This is not the Victorian terrace house but another, larger, house, in another town. For Harry is now a professor and his academic rise has been accompanied by a housing upgrade. Pauline supposes that she should be pleased about this. She walks from room to room while Teresa is at the primary school round the corner and tries to think about furnishings and décor. In fact she thinks about Teresa, who is nervous of a small boy who allegedly pulled her hair and of the threat of mince for school dinner and of some dog in the street. And Pauline thinks of Harry.

  The house is full of Harry, though Harry of course is not there. His smell is around – clinging to the scarf which hangs in the hall, spilling from the bedroom wardrobe, a miasma on the sheets of the bed. Harry himself is teaching or writing or reading or arguing or laughing with someone (who?). If Pauline goes into his study she finds the desk covered with Harry – his handwriting, letters addressed to him, sometimes his diary. She reads the letters, which are almost exclusively concerned with Harry’s professional life, and learns from them the extent to which Harry does not bother to tell her what he is thinking and doing. She had not known that Harry applied for a prestigious job in the States which, as it happens, he did not get. She remembers the American woman historian from Berkeley who was around last year and whom Harry found so stimulating, and wonders. Pauline spends much time wondering, these days. Speculating. Imagining.

  Occasionally she looks at Harry’s diary. She would prefer not to do this, but is impelled. The diary is an engagement diary and while some of the entries are clear enough (seminar 2.00, senate meeting 4.00) others are cryptic. Phone D. 18th. P. – 4.30. Or simply a hieroglyphic – a squiggle, a curlicue. Dental appointments? Library-book renewal dates? Consultations with MI5? Or something else entirely? It is this conjectural something else that Pauline ponders.

  Confrontation is self-defeating, she has come to realize. Harry is not so much defensive or evasive as perplexed. An invisible observer of such an exchange between them would see Pauline as the flailing accuser, resting her case on inference and conjecture, while Harry is the voice of sweet reason, explaining that he is a busy man, that he knows and sees many people, some of whom are indeed women, that these accusations are not reasonable, not sensible.

  And all the time she knows, she knows.

  ‘I’ve had an idea,’ says Pauline. ‘Maurice is going to London tomorrow …’

  ‘I am indeed,’ says Maurice. ‘Anything I can get you?’

  Pauline addresses Teresa. ‘Why don’t you go with him and leave Luke with me? Have a break. He’d be fine if it’s just for a night or so.’

  ‘Oh …’ Teresa is taken aback. She hesitates. She looks at Maurice. ‘Well, thanks, but … I don’t know …’

  Maurice is considering the proposal. ‘Well, that’s a thought …’ It is beautifully done. His tone is just right. He is in no way put out. He looks at Teresa. ‘What do you think?’

  Teresa is in a quandary. Pauline knows precisely what is going through her head. She has never yet left Luke overnight. He is entirely used to Pauline, is frequently alone with her. But each morning of his life he has woken to find Teresa there. If he cries in the night it is she who comforts him.

  ‘Well …’ she says.

  ‘Go on,’ Pauline urges.

  Teresa havers. At last she says, ‘Thanks, but I don’t think I will. I mean, it’s really nice of you but I think I’d rather not. When he’s
bigger maybe …’

  Maurice shrugs. ‘OK. If that’s how you feel. Sure there’s nothing I can bring you, Pauline?’

  11

  Maurice goes to London. Pauline watches the car move away along the track and vanish into the wheat. As soon as it is out of sight she gets up from her desk, goes down the stairs and outside. Teresa’s front door is open. ‘Hi!’ Pauline calls. She goes into Teresa’s kitchen, where Teresa is standing at the sink looking out of the window with Luke trying to climb up one of her legs. She turns and Pauline sees that she has hastily rearranged her face. She smiles, after a fashion: ‘Hi!’

  ‘How about this …’ says Pauline briskly. ‘How about we teach Luke to swim today? There’s a swimming pool at Hadbury now. A bit crummy, but it’ll do. I wouldn’t mind a plunge myself.’

  ‘Oh … Well – yes. Great. Shouldn’t you work, though?’

  ‘I could do with a day off. I need to adjust. I’ve got unicorns on the brain and I should be thinking North Sea oil.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ says Teresa.

  ‘I’ll explain later. Go and find your swimming costume.’

  Pauline drives – Teresa beside her, Luke stowed into the child container behind them. The landscape is simmering, the fields quivering in a heat haze, mirages of shining liquid on the road ahead. ‘Idiot weather,’ says Pauline. ‘It’ll all end in tears. Cataclysmic thunderstorms and snow in August.’

  ‘Mmn …’ Teresa is staring out of the window but she is not thinking about the weather. Pauline shoots a look at her.

  ‘I’ll tell you about these unicorns. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. There was once a Lady. Her name was Talusa. She was beautiful – that goes without saying. Beautiful and reasonably clever and virtuous up to a point. She fell in love with a Knight. The Knight was called Rohan. And the Knight fell in love right back so everything was fine in that department. The problem was that the Lady’s parents didn’t approve of the Knight. They thought he wasn’t rich enough. This is a traditional story in some ways, you note.’