Perfect Happiness

  He reached out, put his free arm round her. ‘I feel what you feel.’

  ‘Honestly? You're not just saying it?’

  ‘Oh, Frances… No, love, I'm not just saying it. I wanted him too.’

  The baby snuffled; his face flickered, like water under a breeze. It was half past two in the morning. There was no-one else in the world, it seemed, but the three of them.

  When Frances returned from the Institute that evening Tabitha said, ‘Zoe wants us to go round for a drink. She says she's bored and cross and there's someone coming who you met in Venice. That man who writes things about music.’

  In fact there were a number of people in Zoe's flat when they arrived. Zoe herself bustled about, apparently exuberant. Frances said, ‘I thought you were bored and cross.’

  ‘I'm recovering. Come and talk to Morris. He's been asking about you.’

  Frances had almost forgotten about him. And now his face – the pointed furry beard, the rather melancholy brown eyes – prompted a response that was purely reflexive: positive. She realized with surprise that she must have liked him more than she knew. They began to talk about Venice; not about murderous children nor about the treachery of beauty that does not acknowledge the feelings of the observer, but about a picture of St Jerome in his study with a little white dog before which, in that inflamed week, Frances had experienced her only moment of pleasure. And then, Venice disposed of, she told him about her new house, and the job, and he told her about the progress of his book and his problems with compiling such things as bibliography and index. ‘I'm a mere journalist,’ he said. ‘I've never had to deal with these refinements before.’

  ‘I once did an index for Steven,’ said Frances. ‘It's not so difficult. The thing is to have all these little cards…’ Morris Corfield nodded gravely as she talked, appearing to take careful note. The conversation, it occurred to Frances, was becoming somewhat banal. She said, ‘All this is rather dull.’ Morris nodded in acquiescence and then jumped slightly.

  ‘Not at all. Absolutely not.’

  Frances laughed. ‘You were getting a glazed look.’

  ‘I was concentrating,’ he said. His tone had the defensiveness of a child caught out in a moment of inattention. He seemed, indeed, a more vulnerable and less assured man than she remembered. The dinner in Venice came back, with a vague power to disconcert. Then, her impression had been of someone amiable, level-headed and a little detached. And I said all sorts of things, she thought, I wasn't myself at all.

  She looked across the room and caught sight of Tabitha, washed up against a wall, looking bleak. ‘We must go. It's been nice to see you again. I'm afraid I was in rather a bad state last time we met. You were very kind.’

  ‘It was a pleasure.’

  ‘Well… Thank you.’ She began to move towards Tabitha.

  ‘You're looking very much better,’ said Morris.

  ‘I am better.’ Francis glanced across the room. ‘I must rescue Tab. Goodbye.’

  Morris seemed about to launch another remark and then said, ‘Goodbye.’

  Zoe, alone, opened the windows to the dark blue noisy London night. She stacked the empty glasses beside the kitchen sink and closed the door on them. She went back into the sitting room and sat in the armchair looking out at the square of sky across which tracked a red and white winking jewel. She finished off a bowl of peanuts and watched the jewel disappear into a black wing of cloud and wished that she had gone back for supper with Frances and Tabitha, as suggested.

  All right, she thought, let's look it in the face. I am missing Eric. I am missing Eric more than I would ever have believed possible. Here am I, who believed herself self-sufficient, who built a fortress around her independence, and now I am sufficient unto myself and I am lonely. In my way, I loved him, and now he is not there I know that I needed him. You have only yourself to thank, Zoe; as our mum used to say, time out of mind ago, of rather lesser griefs. You brought it upon your own head, dear. And yes, I have brought things upon my head all my life, out of risk and out of carelessness. So don't complain.

  She sat on in the darkened room, travelling in melancholy from one image to another. She saw Eric, heard his voice, and the sense of deprivation ground into her. She revisited other loves and other miseries, and took stock. I shall get through this, she thought, because I shall grit my teeth and put up with it, but I would rather go to sleep for six months. For the first time in my life I would readily give up a chunk of it in exchange for absolution from distress. I have always reckoned on a fair share of that – swings and roundabouts, rough with smooth – but just now I feel somewhat less well equipped.

  Morris Corfield, arriving in time for the second half of a concert in the Purcell Room, achieved his seat and realized that he was in danger of falling asleep – the effect not of the orchestra but of drink. He had always been uncomfortably susceptible to alcohol; in youth, it had made him more drunk than other people, nowadays he tended to become comatose. He coasted through the first piece (some sprightly Vivaldi, by good luck), gathered himself sufficiently to make a note or two, and settled down for the Brandenburg.

  By coincidence, the fifth. At once, the English Chamber Orchestra faded from before his eyes and its place was taken by that student orchestra, gamely playing away beneath the uncomprehending portraits. Their faces, now, were not to be recovered, except for that of his own son Mike and the girl Tabitha of whom he had caught sight again this evening, while talking to her mother. And, as Frances Brooklyn's face now dominated, he detached himself further yet from the Purcell Room and the ECO, till only Bach continued to unite them. In his mind's eye, he continued to talk to this agreeable woman. He said various things for which there had not been the opportunity an hour ago. He hoped to see her again. He remembered, in Venice, the impression she gave of someone determinedly enduring some kind of nightmare; he had felt, in the face of it, inadequate. And, since, he had wondered if her confidences at dinner – deeply uncharacteristic, he suspected – would have made him uncongenial to her. We do not always cherish those to whom we have unburdened ourselves. But, just now, she had seemed perfectly pleased to see him and had barely referred to the occasion. They had talked of quite other things. She had given him some guidance about indexing, of which she apparently had experience, and he had tried to give the impression of taking note while searching for some way to ensure another meeting. Consequently, he could no longer remember what she had said about indexing.

  Morris was a less confident man than was realized, either by friends or foes. Behind the professional aplomb and a manner that could verge on urbane, there lurked uncertainties. When he was young he could never entirely believe that people liked him; as time passed a reassuring bank of friendships more or less convinced him that they did, but he could not quite see why. He felt himself to be somewhat unapproachable, through no desire of his own, and personally unattractive. He had never cared for the face and form that he saw in the mirror. The first time that he found himself loved, he had been quite genuinely astonished. And when, towards the end of his marriage, his wife had told him once in a bleak and cruel moment of revelation that she had never really enjoyed sleeping with him, he had nodded in acquiescence. It was only later that the remark had penetrated, subtly and hideously re-adjusting the twelve years of shared lives. For a while, after her departure, his uncertainties had so powerfully surfaced that he had become reclusive. Now, alone for years, he had recovered some self-esteem, if not a normal ration. He had almost, once, re-married, but had drawn back at the last moment, realizing that what he mistook for love was an altogether more pallid emotion; which might of course have done quite well, but he retained still a sad hunger for something better.

  The concerto ended. In the foyer, Morris found himself alongside a couple of acquaintances and paused for a few minutes' conversation. Thence he passed out into the bright fairyland of the Embankment: the incandescent buildings, the jewelled bridges, the dark secret gleam of the river. He stood at the pa
rapet, looking, gripped by pleasure; what he saw and what he felt fused into a sensation of elation and gratitude. He was glad to be alive, in that place, with those sights before his eyes; the world, in that moment, seemed to be promising him something.

  Tabitha sat reading, day by day. Ranged in front of her on the desk in her room, this strange new room in the new strange house, were three neat piles of books. Every morning she sat down and took one of these, opened her notepad, and began to read. Then a battle ensued between the words before her and her own leaden and thunderous thoughts; on good days the words won and Tabitha travelled with them page by page and chapter by chapter; on bad days she sat, her head churning, and the words might as well have been in Chinese for all the sense they made. From time to time Frances would softly knock and put her head round the door, offering coffee or fruit juice. Tabitha would look up and smile and shake her head and say she was fine, thanks, she'd be down presently.

  When she was a child, aged ten or so, she had gone through a religious phase, much taken suddenly with the alien ritual of morning service in the stone-and-flower smelling church of the place in which they were then living. She had gone to a service with her best friend's family and had sat in the envious trance of an outsider; returning, she had smouldered in her agnostic home. ‘I want to go to church on Sundays,’ she had said to Steven, glowering. And Steven, of course, had replied with liberalism and rationality that she must by all means go to church on Sundays if she wished, but that it would not be possible for him to go with her. He explained why not. He explained why he didn't believe in God. But other people, he said, think quite otherwise; you will have to make up your own mind, when you are older, what you feel about it. I am sure that Susie's parents would be quite happy for you to go with them to the service. And Tabitha had scowled, while resentfully perceiving that he was reasonable; she wanted to be part of an ordinary church-going family, done up in best clothes, shaking hands with the vicar, gossiping in the churchyard. Frances, taking pity on her, had accompanied her twice and then had said apologetically, ‘I'm sorry, darling, I'd rather not. I feel silly, you see.’

  And so Tabitha for several weeks had gone to church on Sunday mornings with Susie's family, returning home in a state of defiant grace, shooting glances at Steven and Frances, who obligingly adjusted weekend plans so as not to interfere with this new practice. And then the church pews had become rather hard and the services longer than she had thought and her relationship with Susie began to creak a little and presently she stopped going to church. Nobody remarked on this and life went on exactly as before. And now, she realized, her beliefs – or absence of beliefs – were much as Steven's, though probably less deliberately arrived at.

  Three days after he died, Frances had said to them – to her and to Harry and to Zoe – ‘I wish I was a Christian.’ Only Zoe had nodded, in apparent understanding.

  Now Tabitha, doggedly ploughing her way through the days, thought that she understood. What I am feeling, she thought, is nothing at all compared to what she has been feeling, I know that. But I am wretched in a way that I did not know it was possible to be wretched. Surely, if believing in God does anything for people, it helps them through things like this?

  Then, back with the books, with the huge impersonal problems of the past, she felt small and peevish, beating her fists against impervious windows. All this has happened to everyone, she thought. Not that that helps.

  *

  Frances, driving up on to the Westway, contemplated the day ahead with resignation. In the last ten months the mandatory visits to her mother and her mother-in-law, living respectively in High Wycombe and Marlow, had been among the most exacting moments. Both women, widowed, had in their different ways tried to claim community of suffering; Frances had found herself driven into a resentful resistance. She did not want to discuss the processes of bereavement with her mother, or share her grief with Steven's. She felt guilt at her irritation, and the guilt sent her at regular intervals along the Westway, in expiation.

  Mrs Brooklyn sat in the farthest corner of the sofa, as though in retreat from her visitor, knitting. She said, for the second time, ‘I hope you had an easy drive down, dear.’ And then, ‘You'll give my love to the children, won't you?’ Appropriately affectionate messages, Christmas and birthday presents had been, on the whole, the extent of her relationship with Harry and Tabitha; they evidently alarmed her in the way that her own children had alarmed her. Both she and her husband, Frances thought, would have gladly done without the provocations of parenthood; their purpose in life, if such it could be called, had been to exist as unexceptionally and as unobtrusively as possible. Steven used to say that their most fervent injunctions had been that he and Zoe should not attract attention to themselves.

  And from that nerveless upbringing had emerged Zoe, and Steven. Frances, thinking of this, smiled. Her mother-in-law looked across at her with mistrust. ‘Keeping well, are you? I always say, moving house is a terrible strain.’

  You haven't moved house for forty years, thought Frances. The room depressed her unutterably, as it always had. All the furnishings were chosen for neutrality of effect or qualities of endurance; a limp beige colour predominated. She got up. ‘Can I have a look round the garden?’

  Together, they toured the lawn and the symmetrical semicircles of the flower-beds, in which standard roses were strapped to posts like prisoners awaiting execution. Mrs Brooklyn reiterated how difficult it was to keep it as her husband had liked it; a boy came in on Saturdays, but was not to be trusted. In the circular central bed, clumps of lobelia alternated with red salvia, as they had done ever since Frances could remember. French marigolds burned beside the small terrace. Frances, determinedly, related the contents of Harry's last letter from France. Steven had found it difficult to love his mother; his attitude towards her had been a mixture of duty and an irritated tolerance. Frances, more than ever, felt a bewildered gloom that she should be tethered to this woman with whom she had nothing in common except the fact that she had borne two people she loved. And in whom there seemed to be nothing of her.

  She said, ‘Zoe had a very good article in the Sunday Times – about the Vienna conference.’

  Mrs Brooklyn stooped to twitch a weed from the scoured bed. ‘I don't often see the papers. We used to enjoy watching Steven on the television. Mrs Rogers next door was saying only the other day he had such a presence. She always used to pop round when she noticed he was going to be on, in case I'd not seen.’

  Frances said with sudden quiet rage, ‘Zoe is very highly thought of, you know.’

  Mrs Brooklyn looked up, catching the tone and instinctively heading away from trouble, ‘Oh, she's done very well. Harold always said, Zoe's done very well, you know. It's a shame she's never married.’

  ‘Zoe has never wanted to be married.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Brooklyn obscurely. She moved on, pointing out a dying apple tree. ‘I'm wondering if Harold wouldn't have wanted a new one in there. She always knew her own mind, of course, even as a little girl.’

  Frances moved away. She walked to the far end of the garden and stood looking at the fence, precisely at eye-height, which shielded this garden from the neighbouring one. She had never been able to decide if the colourlessness of her mother-in-law's utterances reflected a state of mind or simply a determined resistance to the demands of life. Did she actually feel less, having devoted herself to avoiding stress? She had seemed to grieve at Steven's death, but what she had said, over and over again was, ‘It should never have happened.’

  Mrs Brooklyn came up. Frances, suffering a mixture of irritation and guilt that had the odd effect of making her tingle, as though mildly electrified, asked about some old photographs she wanted to have copied. They went back into the house. Mrs Brooklyn, taking the albums from the bottom of the sideboard, laid them on the table. ‘Why don't you just take the ones you want for yourself, dear. Going to all that bother of having them copied…’

  ‘It isn't a both
er. And you should have them. The ones of Steven and Zoe as children.’

  ‘I've got my memories,’ said Mrs Brooklyn. ‘Well, just as you like.’ She picked up her knitting. Frances began to leaf through the albums, removing a snapshot here and there. She passed through infancy and schooldays and reached student days: Zoe tousled and laughing on a sunlit lawn, Steven in a duffel coat, with odd dapper sleek hair. Steven and Zoe together, looking bored. Steven with another girl, the photo over-exposed, the girl's face too dark to make out.

  She said, ‘I don't remember this one. Who is that?’

  Mrs Brooklyn peered. ‘I think that would be Sarah. Yes, it must be Sarah.’

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah Hennings. Steven's fiancée.’

  Frances blinked. She picked the album up and looked more closely. She prised out the photograph and turned it over. On the back was pencilled, faintly ‘May 1952’. Three years before she had met Steven. She stared again at the photograph: Steven looked young and grave, the girl's expression was quite lost. They stood side by side in some dark leafy place; the girl's hand, it was just possible to make out, lay lightly in Steven's.

  She said, ‘I've never heard of her.’

  Mrs Brooklyn lowered her knitting; for an instant a tiny shaft of prurient interest lit her eyes. She said, ‘I'd have thought he'd have said. They weren't engaged all that long. She was a nice girl. But they didn't always hit it off I suppose and it came to nothing.’ She spoke as though of distant acquaintances.

  Frances returned the photograph to its place on the page. She said, ‘Now I come to think of it, I believe he did once mention something.’ She turned over further pages, selected a couple more photographs, gathered together her pile, found in her handbag a used envelope into which to put them. ‘I'll let you have these back next time I come. The house is looking quite organized now. It's time you came to see it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Brooklyn. ‘I'm planning to do that.’ Both of them knew that she would not. She came with Frances to the door and stood there watching as she got into the car and started the engine. At precisely the right moment, as the car moved off, Mrs Brooklyn raised her hand to wave; Frances had no idea, she realized, whether her visits pleased the old woman or not.