After about half an hour of food talk O’Rourke was getting fidgety.
“What’s our situation now in terms of supplies?” He said it quietly, just to me, but everyone turned to listen.
“Not good,” I said. “We missed the delivery before the June rains because the ship from France didn’t come in time. By the time it arrived the trucks couldn’t get through to us.”
“That’s because of the mud, huh?”
“And the rivers,” said Debbie. “The water just comes rushing down in a torrent. You can’t get through it.”
“So what did you do?”
“We had to go on half rations for August,” I said. “The trucks got through at the start of September but the UN had sent some of our consignment to the South so we only got two months’ rations instead of five.”
“So where does that leave you now?”
“We should have had another delivery at the beginning of October but the ship is late again. I’ve been cutting down the rations so we’ve got enough for a few weeks, maybe four or five, but not if we start getting new arrivals.”
“And the rations come from UNHCR?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you get emergency food from SUSTAIN?” said O’Rourke.
I smiled wryly. O’Rourke was probably used to the big U.S. agencies who were able to throw money at a crisis.
“SUSTAIN are supposed to supply staff here, not food. They’re good. They’ll help if they can but they’re just one little agency with no money.”
There was silence.
“It’ll probably be all right,” I said. “The ship’ll come soon.”
“You reckon?” said O’Rourke. Then he said, “Shall we have some cheese?” and, realizing the irony, he smiled. “Well, that’s the starving taken care of. Pass the Brie, will you?”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Henry. “Let them eat Brie.”
After a while O’Rourke got up and went to bed and Linda followed soon after. There were lots of meaningful looks exchanged. But they were not particularly satisfying as meaningful looks go because nobody quite knew what they meant.
“Anyone want any more cheese while it’s still here?” said Henry, handing it round, leaning his arm across Sian’s shoulder.
“Rosie, do you remember Monica Hutchinson—used to run Dessie in ’seventy-three?” said Betty.
Well, obviously I didn’t since I had only just entered my teens at the time.
“It’s funny, I don’t know why, I was thinking about her today.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. She was a lovely woman.”
Silence, everyone continued to pick at the cheese.
“Lovely—but just a bit too easygoing. Oooh, they had terrible trouble in Dessie. The staff used to indulge in relationships, which I’ve always felt is most unwise in a small community, I’m sure you agree. Anyway, Monica just used to turn a blind eye to it, you know, people will be people. But they ended up in a most terrible situation with fights and dreadful scenes and in the end two of the nurses had to be sent home. But the worst of it was, they had complaints from the Ministry of Information office who’d seen it Going On.”
“Seen what going on?” I said.
“Well, you know,” said Betty.
More silent eating. I daren’t look at anyone.
“I must say, Betty, I didn’t realize ministers of information extended their line of duty to old Vera Voyeurism,” Henry remarked.
A laugh spurted out of Debbie which she turned into an only quite convincing cough/sneeze hybrid.
“She was a super girl was Monica.” As if she hadn’t heard, Betty went on trying to convince us this wasn’t a parable. “Married Colin Seagrove who was CMO at Wadkowli in ’seventy-seven.”
I wanted to stay talking with everyone. It was reassuring, all the normal stupid chat, but they all started getting up and going to bed so I went and sat on the edge of the hill for quite a long time, thinking. Debbie came over after she’d had her shower and we chatted for a bit about the arrivals, and then did a bit of nodding and winking in the direction of Linda’s hut. When I got into my hut I’d forgotten to tuck the net in round the bed and there was a spider on the sheet, a brown one with thick legs covered in lumps. I flattened it with a copy of Newsweek and chucked it outside. I checked the bed with the hurricane lamp but it still wasn’t nice getting in. I couldn’t sleep because I kept seeing the family slumped against Betty’s hut. The dogs were barking. Sometimes they used to bark all night, those bloody dogs. I wondered if Linda really was in bed with O’Rourke. I started to feel lonely, then reminded myself that there are worse things than being on your own.
CHAPTER
Seven
I was crying in my bed beside him, but I think he didn’t know. A thin wet line was trickling across my face into my ear. It was Saturday night, two months since I had first slept with Oliver. I got out of bed, and crept towards the door, trying to avoid the floorboard that creaked. I stretched out my hand for my dressing gown and as I reached across I knocked a glass off the dressing table next to it.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I froze, said nothing.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s dark,” I whispered.
Oliver picked his watch up off the bedside table and threw it down. “Jesus Christ, it’s five o’clock in the morning. I’ve only been asleep half an hour. Thanks.”
I stayed where I was till he settled down, then carried on towards the door. It was closed. I turned the handle very, very slowly and pulled. It let out a long, loud creak.
A book flew across the room. I slipped out and shut the door behind me.
In the kitchen I made a cup of tea and went through into the living room, where my tapes and books were now arranged in alphabetical order.
I had been looking forward to Saturday night all week. That was my date with Oliver. He was a busy man. He liked to sleep with me, and seemed keen on me, but he didn’t have time to see me more than once a week. I understood, of course I did. I was lucky to be sleeping with Oliver Marchant. Hermione was positively green. Sex was all the more wild and exquisite because I was unsure of him and had to wait. It was the fruit of days of fantasies. I used to feel him inside me and think I was still dreaming.
The relationship seesaw: What would you do if it was perfectly balanced? I thought. Sitting there, suspended boringly, legs dangling in the air. Much better to be slightly at a disadvantage; so much more fun that way, swinging to and fro trying to get a bit higher. Much better to have those passionate, tantalizing thrills than endless boring TV suppers, sitting snuggled on the sofa in jeans and an old cardi, not caring what you looked like because inside you were so sure he loved you just for you. I looked at the trail of stockings and suspenders on the living room floor and burst into tears again. What you don’t want is to be on a seesaw with a maniac like Oliver, who keeps lifting you up high then banging you down on the tarmac, so that all your most sensitive inner parts are bashed about and broken. I knew that I should dust myself down, thumb my nose at him and walk away. I couldn’t do it.
On the Friday he had called me at the office and said he was sorry, he’d forgotten, he had a party on Saturday night.
“Oh, great. That’ll be nice, whose party?”
“Rosie, the thing is, it’s just a small do, invitation only. I mean I don’t really want to go but . . .”
So I couldn’t come. Saturday night was off. Every time he did this I thought he meant it was over. Hermione was listening.
“That’s fine. No problem,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Look I’ll call you tonight. OK?”
“I thought you were busy tonight?”
Why couldn’t we go out tonight instead?
“Look, I just need a night in, all right, it’s been a long week.” So why not have a night in with me, watching telly on the sofa? I said nothing.
“I’ll call you tonight.” He
was angry now. I had offended the mysterious unwritten code.
“I might go out tonight.”
“Who are you going with?” he said angrily.
I said nothing, startled by his tone.
“OK, if that’s the way you want to play it. I’ll call you in the morning. Bye.” Slam.
“All right, that’ll be great. I’ll see you then. Yes, lovely. Talk to you tomorrow,” I said to no one, smiling at no one, looking up at Hermione. “Bye, sweetheart.”
That night I went round to Shirley’s and moped a bit, had a bottle of wine with her, giggled about men—“Men? Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em”—tried clothes on, went home in a taxi and a good mood.
When I got in there was one message on the answerphone.
“Hello, my little Devon plumpkin. Just wanted to hear your voice. Sorry I was so vile this afternoon. It’s been a filthy week. I’ll tell you about it. Mmmmm. Wish you were here now. Give me a ring when you get in if you like.”
I was a bit drunk. I called him. He was sweet, we talked dirty. We arranged to have lunch on Sunday. We talked dirty some more. I felt romantic. Poor old thing, with his pressures and horrible work and social demands. He said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll come round after the party tomorrow. I won’t be late. It’s just a duty job.” And I thought, Why not?
On Saturday I spoke to Rhoda. She was going to the same party as Oliver. It was in an old church in Notting Hill. Five hundred people were expected. Maybe he didn’t realize. Maybe it didn’t seem like that on the invitation.
“Ditch him, girl,” said Rhoda.
I stayed in. I thought he’d come round before midnight. At eleven, I slipped into a little black silk teddy and stockings. He really liked stockings, Oliver did. At one o’clock, I got into bed, still in the stockings. I slept in fits and starts. I was awake at three when the doorbell rang. He was rolling drunk. This time, even when we were having sex all over the living room, I was annoyed.
When we lay in bed afterwards I asked him about the party. “Were there a lot of people there?”
“Yeah, er, no, actually. Not really.”
“Who was there?”
He told me about it as if he was telling a story.
“. . . and it was then Vicky Spankie rather fell for my charms.”
“What do you mean? I thought you didn’t like her.”
“Hey, hey, come on, I was just dancing with her and talking to her. She’s a sweet girl. It’s completely absurd her being married to that opportunist Indian idiot. I’ll give it three months. He’ll take her for everything she has.”
“I thought that was what she’d done to him.”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy, my plumpkin? No need, no need. She has got nice tits, though.”
He fumbled drunkenly at my breasts. I felt cold as a lump of dough.
When I crept back to bed from the living room at six he didn’t wake. He didn’t wake when I got up at eleven either. I faffed around the flat for a couple of hours, trying to read the papers, not settling to anything. The only thing that cheered me up was a piece in one of the tabloids, called “Twenty Facts You Never Knew about Rain Forest Indians.” There was a composite picture of Vicky Spankie and Rani at the top of the page with Vicky looking in the direction of Rani’s loincloth with an expression of some dismay.
Oliver still wasn’t awake at one. It was a lovely hot day outside. I imagined all the other people in London, all happily paired off, girls with lovers who wanted to go out with them, lying in parks in the sunshine reading the papers, holding hands, jumping into cars and driving off to country pubs. And here I was, creeping round my own flat in my powder-blue wrap, alone but trying not to make a noise in case I woke him and made him furious, unable even to wash my hair and get dressed.
Sod this, I thought. I started running a bath. I heard the sounds of stirring in the bedroom. I went to get the hair dryer and my clothes.
He was under the duvet like a beast in a lair. His eyes were red, his chin was covered in stubble. He looked at me as if he hated me.
“I am trying to sleep,” he said.
I picked up the clothes and the hair dryer without a word.
I sat miserably in the bath. I was fed up, fed up, fed up. I hated my job, I hated Hermoine, but most of all I was angry. I had no strength. I had to fit in with what he wanted or he would leave me. I had no bargaining power except to leave him and I couldn’t do it because I was in love with him. I got out of the bath, put on my makeup, got dressed, and dried my hair.
I decided that I had to make myself ditch him. I would go out and walk around in the sun, then I would come back and wake him up and throw him out. I was just writing a note when he appeared in the doorway, wearing trousers and no shirt. His cheeks were flushed and his black hair was all sticking up on top, like a little boy’s. I saw him clock my mood. He came and knelt on the floor in front of me, nuzzling my breasts. Then he took my face in his hands and stroked it with his fingertips.
“Rosie,” he said, quietly, earnestly, “you are such perfection.” I was weakening. I didn’t want the pain of leaving him, I wanted warmth and love.
“I’m going out,” I said uncertainly.
“Going out? Why?”
“Because it’s a beautiful day.”
“Darling, darling, I’m sorry. I was a horrible dormant beast. You look wonderful. Come on, let’s have a cup of coffee and sit on the terrace.”
I stomped into the kitchen and started making coffee. I did not know what to feel. I felt one thing and then I felt another thing. When I went into the living room he had tidied up all the things from the floor and he held his arms open wide to me. He was a very, very beautiful man. Still I did not respond. He got up, took the coffee cups out of my hands, put them down, took me in his arms and started crooning in a French accent. “You must reeemember zeees, a keees is just a keees, a smile is just a smile.” I didn’t want to laugh but I did. Then he swept me up and carried me to bed. It is hard to believe that someone does not want you when they make love to you as if they love you.
This time when we lay back on the pillows he did not light a cigarette and I did not snuggle up to him. I was in the after-sex state where your whole body feels as though it has undergone a fabulous, glorious chemical change. Part of me was still entirely besotted with him, part of me wanted to throw my arms round him and tell him I loved him so much. But the rest of me was still hurt and filled with foreboding.
I could tell he wanted me to lie on his chest like I always did. He reached out and tried to put his arm round me, but I pulled away.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Nothing.” I was so frightened he would stop being nice that I couldn’t explain.
He stroked my hair and mumbled something which sounded like “I love you.”
“What?” I said.
“I love you,” he said. It was the magic formula, the lure, the bargaining counter: the overloaded phrase which meant everything and nothing. It did the trick, as he knew it would.
“I love you too,” I said, because it was true.
That afternoon we spent a lot of time talking about Oliver’s problems, his pressures at work and why he found it so difficult to have relationships. I cooked him a nice supper, listened to him, and sympathized, and it seemed that things would be better between us. He just needed a bit of love and understanding, I decided. We spent the next night together too. It was the first time we had spent two nights together on the trot.
“Ah. Come in, come in. How’s it goin’? Any news from Marchant?”
“I . . .” I could swear Sir William knew what Oliver and I had been doing last night. I had a vision of Oliver coming towards me under the duvet, ready to take me.
“What’s the matter, gel, cat got yer tongue?” The trouble was Sir William’s literary mercy dash had become a taboo subject between Oliver and me.
“I don’t think they’re going to come out and film in Africa,” I hedge
d, “but I think they might include you in the discussion. We should get some decent coverage in the papers anyway.”
“Hmm. When’s it supposed to be?”
“Six weeks’ time.”
“Well, if the damn thing’s not going to be on TV there might not be a lot of point in me goin’. Might have to send you out on your own.”
“What?”
“Might have to go on your own, gel, and see to the photographs.”
This was the first he had mentioned my going at all. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I’d never been outside Europe before. But over the next few weeks, the idea began to seem more and more alluring.
“Ah, it’s about tonight.” It was Oliver’s assistant, as usual.
“Oh, hello, how are you?”
Hermione looked across at me and sniffed.
“Fine, thank you. Now about tonight. It’s dinner at Richard and Annalene’s for the Dalai Lama.”
“Sorry, Richard—?”
“Richard Jenner. You’ve seen his film?”
“Not all the way through. I mean, actually no.”
“Oh. Well. Don’t worry. I’ll see if I can have a cassette biked round to you. How about that? So Oliver will pick you up at eight. He said don’t overdress.”
Oliver rang me half an hour later, pretending it was just to chat, but I suspected it was to check on what I was wearing. It was two weeks after we had spent that whole Sunday together, and this was our first formal outing as man and girlfriend. He said he would come round at eight-fifteen. When my doorbell rang, it was eight o’clock. I was still drying my hair, and only halfway through my dinner party homework watching Jenner’s truly terrible film which featured his girlfriend Annalene as a Polish waitress. I was nervous as hell. I was gulping at a gin and tonic to calm myself. When I got to the front door there was no Oliver but another driver in a hat.
We drove for a long way down into Docklands, stopping in a narrow alley between black warehouses. At the entrance to the building, an arch had been cut away and replaced by glass. Inside was a flag, which said, “Show Flat,” stuck in a pot full of tropical plants.