She raised her hand, palm outwards. ‘Do you want to understand that mystery?’ she asked. ‘Or do you want to know it?’
‘I want to know it.’
‘Then you must be more committed.’
From childhood his faith had been rooted in ideas, never passion; ideas had sent him to the Church. He had turned to ideas because the world made him squeamish. That was why he was so vulnerable to the woman on the bed. It was as bitter – and exciting – and simple – as that. She was sex. She was life. She was risk. She was everything he had shied away from; everything he had wanted from Anna Dawe, under the guise of love. He didn’t know what he wanted now. He didn’t know whether he had been damned or freed. He supposed that you never did. He opened his dry mouth to say this, but she was already warning him.
‘You must be more of everything.’
‘And yet – ’ he said. He meant, ‘To live fully is to admit that you will die.’
‘Life is not death,’ she said. ‘Neither is death.’
He tried to laugh. ‘We have no choice about that.’
‘Everyone has a choice.’
He would not be convinced. They talked and talked, to and fro, until late afternoon tinted the light between them. At that she rose to her feet in a motion somehow floating and energetic at the same time, and put on her gloves. Her long brown skirts settled themselves with a smell of dust, flowers, menstrual blood. When she approached him, he backed away. She smiled sadly. ‘Oh, Francis,’ she chided, ‘Francis.’ He watched her descend the stairs and go along the hall. He always left the front door open for her, though he suspected she did not need him to. He left it open because he didn’t like to think of her coming and going without using it.
*
Physics had robbed Alice Meynell, however temporarily, of some of her sturdy qualities. Her enthusiasm had diminished. She rode the Ducati about the lanes with no less confidence – because at the speeds Alice travelled, diminished confidence would certainly have brought about injury to herself or others – but there was a morose determination in the note of its engine, and calculation had replaced brio in the rhythm of its gear changes. She hung about in Anna’s kitchen, quoting from magazine articles with subtitles like ‘Is Celibacy the New Promiscuity?’. To get her own back on her physicist, she decided not to go to America to see him; then, as soon as he wrote to her from Baja, full of the poetry of something called ‘critical state theory’ – a kind of mathematics which, he claimed, could explain everything from earthquakes to stock exchange crashes, although ‘explain’ was clearly not the right word in this context – changed her mind.
‘He’s just so excited by this stuff,’ she said.
Anna, who had had enough of obsessional men to last a lifetime, was dubious about the whole thing. ‘You must make sure you have a really good time and not let him set the agenda.’ This sounded feeble, so she added, ‘I mean, with some men it’s so easy to lose yourself.’
Alice grinned. ‘Can you see me letting that happen?’
‘Of course not,’ said Anna, who could see it quite clearly.
Originally, Alice had asked for a lift to Drychester station, where she could catch a train to Heathrow. But that would have meant changing twice and catching a later plane, so Anna had offered to take her all the way, insisting, ‘It would be a change for me. Honestly, Alice. I can see Drychester any day, but I haven’t been to an airport in years.’
‘You must be bored.’
They found themselves on the bustling concourse of Terminal Three, two women and a toddler, in everyone’s way, feeling provincial and not entirely sure what to say to one another. Anna’s cotton print dress was already a little the worse for wear. Eleanor had been sick in the car; now, round-eyed and diffident in the face of it all – especially when she caught sight of the huge coloured tailfins of the aircraft manoeuvring stealthily about on the tarmac outside – she was clingy and demanding. ‘John,’ she whispered, ‘Dada’ and clutched her spoon in case anyone tried to take it away. She had never seen so many people. None of them knew who she was.
‘Well,’ said Alice. ‘I’d better be off.’
‘Have a really good time,’ Anna repeated.
‘I’ll do that all right,’ Alice assured her.
‘Don’t forget to send us a postcard.’
‘I’ll do that too.’
They stood uncertainly for a moment in the rising tide of travellers at the departure lounge, then Alice smiled and kissed them both, and strode off abruptly. Anna held Eleanor up in the air. ‘Wave,’ she told her. ‘Wave to Alice!’ Eleanor blinked. To give her the idea, Anna stood on her tiptoes and waved energetically. Eleanor stared at this display, then at her own hand, then at Alice’s retreating back and scuffed cordura softpack luggage. Eventually, with great effort, she waved. But by then Alice had vanished into the crowd.
‘Well.’ Anna sighed. ‘That’s that, I suppose.’ She looked at her watch. She was in no hurry to face the motorway again. She showed Eleanor the row of coffee shops that stretched away, steamy and warm, smelling of mocha and warm cream, in both directions from where they stood. ‘Shall we have a cake before we leave? At one of these places?’
Eleanor beamed. ‘Muffing,’ she said.
*
Without Alice to distract her Eleanor became difficult again. She tried to keep her father in view at all times and showed anxiety if he left a room without her. She didn’t want to toddle, and the builders made her shy and speechless. Still chastened, perhaps, by her encounter with the world outside Nonesuch, she clung to Anna’s shoulder and firmly clutched her spoon. Anna consulted the baby books: Setbacks, she read, are common. Be encouraging.
If Eleanor was preoccupied, Anna felt restless. The airport had been a shock to her too; living in a village so long, she had begun without knowing it to miss the bustle of things. With Alice gone and only Eleanor to talk to the day seemed empty. To give herself something to do, she sat down at the computer in John’s office, and – withdrawing the last of her savings from an e-banking account – began day-trading again, buying mainly into companies that specialised in sustainable low-tech solutions for third world problems.
Soon she was up there every afternoon, gaining a little more than she lost, watching the numbers scroll, trying to feel her way back into the life of money. But though day-trading was fun, and reminded her she had talents and qualities of her own, it wasn’t the rough-and-tumble she had been used to at TransCorp and it hardly filled an hour. The rest of the time she poked about in the rooms along the corridor from the office, fastidious as a cat – her nose wrinkling with those smells of dust and fire damage and ghostly 1940s Brylcreem – but hoping perhaps to understand why Mark and Oliver kept coming back to Stella Herringe’s things. That was how, kneeling in front of the abandoned Kelvinator surrounded by bundles of estate documents tied up in green string, she found the little screw-topped jar of white emulsion, labelled, in Stella Herringe’s distinctive childish hand, like Women’s Institute jam.
Someone had pushed it right to the back of the shelf, behind two or three old Eastlight box files, an ordinary little jar which had originally contained supermarket honey or peanut butter. Anna took it from the shelf. She held it up to the light; gave the lid a half-turn anticlockwise. That was enough. The room filled suddenly with a perfume so distinctive, so authoritative, it was less like a smell than a voice. It ‘turned your head’ in the old sense of the words: you couldn’t wait to see who had entered the room, laughed, spoken your name…
It was always Stella Herringe. Stella, six months before the fatal fire, leaning over to touch Anna’s wrist and whisper, ‘You should take care of that skin, dear. I can recommend something.’ Stella at a dinner party in a one-sleeved Amanda Wakeley frock and Manolo Blahnik kitten heels, looking up suddenly in the candlelight to laugh. Stella smoking a cigarette, always laughing and turning the men’s heads, always eighteen years old, whispering, ‘How old are you now? Thirty-five? Thirty-seven?’ and ‘Are
you afraid yet?’ and ‘I promise you, dear, that it works.’
Anna held in her hand the balm to every woman’s nightmare. A cream that really could make you young.
Engelion.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said. She sat back on her heels, breathing as if she had just cycled up to Cresset Beacon. ‘Oh, my God.’
*
She found John in the kitchen.
‘Where’s Eleanor?’
John indicated the baby intercom, winking cheerfully in its corner. ‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘She was tired this morning, so I thought I’d get her down for an hour or two.’
‘Good. I want to talk to you.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Did you know this was still here?’
‘What?’
She put the jar on the table in front of him. ‘Open it, John.’
He did as she asked, blinking as the perfume enveloped him, its more obvious elements – traditional flowers, the bloom on old English orchard fruits – barely masking whatever coiled, thick and musky and animal, beneath. He studied the even white surface of the cream; brushed it with the tip of his finger. Anna knew how it would feel. Though lightly textured, it would have a consistency which made it seem as thick as oil; it would be surprisingly cold to the touch. John raised his finger to his face. Anna gasped and caught his wrist. He stared at her for a moment, then stumbled over to the sink and began washing his hands. After he had washed them three or four times, he bent down to the cupboard under the sink and came up with a wire-wool scouring pad and washed them again, using that. ‘Christ,’ he kept saying. ‘Christ.’
She touched his shoulder, but he didn’t notice. Eventually, when he felt he could stop washing, she said, ‘This is what they’re here for, John.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She brandished the jar in front of him. ‘I don’t want this in my house.’
He looked defeated. ‘Do you think I do?’ he said. ‘Throw it out, Anna. Throw it out.’
‘That’s not enough. I want Mark and Oliver Holland thrown out too.’
‘They’re not here today.’
‘You know bloody well what I mean!’ She went out to the dustbin, dropped the jar inside, banged the lid down as hard as she could. Perhaps hearing the clatter from her cot, Eleanor woke up and began to cry, her voice, relayed to them by the baby intercom, sounding tinny and distant. ‘I’ll get her,’ Anna offered. ‘It’s my turn.’ Then, ‘This is what they’ve been after all along, John. I never want them here again.’
*
Busy, busy, always busy. The hedges wind round and round, and I go to the heart of the hedges, also up and down stairs, up and down the corridors, busy as you like in the moonlight. (And busy when you get there too, says Izzie.) Stair, wall and corner, I open each cubbyhole and niche, and I draw out all their little secrets. It’s easy now. Knowing secrets makes them yours. Knowing secrets makes you theirs.
I got my own secrets now, I said, and Izzie said, you watch that others’ secrets don’t find you out. You get above yourself and there’ll be enough secrets out there to bury you.
Then she says, What’s your name? once, and I tell her. What’s your name? twice, and I tell her. What’s your name? three times, and I tell her. Never forget that, she says. But what’s in a name, when you don’t know who you are? I say. Busy, busy, my girl, is Izzie’s advice. That’s the answer to that conundrum: you get busy. You’ll know who you are all right, when Izzie’s good and ready. You’ve got to earn your identity in this life.
*
Anna wondered what was happening to Alice in America. I miss her, she thought. I even miss the sound of that damned motorbike. She speculated about Alice’s physicist, to whom she gave brown hair, then black, then a smile which, reminding her strongly of Jake Wishart’s, caused her to blush while watching TV on the sofa with John. John didn’t notice. He had been withdrawn and distant since the discovery of the Engelion cream. She knew how disappointed he was. If Mark and Oliver went, their money went with them and John’s hopes along with it. He was blaming her a little for bringing it to his notice, for making his choices so stark, but she had been prepared for that.
That wasn’t what puzzled her. It was something else.
She thought for a day or two, then asked at breakfast, ‘Why are you avoiding me?’
He was trying to do the Guardian crossword puzzle while Eleanor massaged a slurry of Coco Pops and full-cream milk into her hair and shouted, ‘Tooty! Tooty tooty tooty!’ He put the paper down and stared at Anna with exaggerated patience for some time before replying, ‘Anna, we’re sitting here at the table together.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Two minutes ago you asked me if you could have the marmalade.’
‘I don’t care.’ She got up. ‘You’re avoiding me and you know it.’
John, out of his depth, got up too and tried to put his arm round her, while Eleanor gazed at them both with interest.
‘It isn’t the same,’ Anna said, slipping away from him and going to stand by the sink, her arms folded under her breasts. ‘It isn’t the baby or the house, or being tired all the time or having no money. It’s not even Mark and Oliver, though I know you’re upset about that. You’re avoiding me even when we’re in the same room, and I can’t work you out and it just isn’t the same between us.’
He shrugged helplessly, as if to say, ‘How could anyone deal with such high levels of irrationality?’
*
Several days had passed without answer since Anna had left the note in Francis Baynes’s kitchen, but she rang him up anyway and invited him to tea on the lawn. She wanted one of those old, safe, comforting teas, during which he would eat most of the scones, complain about his bishop, then look across at the house, with its Flemish gables against the blue sky and, after a period of satisfied silence, say, ‘And what about your life, Anna? What’s happening in your life?’ In the event it rained, forcing them to have tea in one of the ground-floor rooms, where most of the furniture was still under dust sheets.
They sat with a spindly little gatelegged table between them, while Eleanor slept in her car seat on the polished floor and Orlando watched the milk jug like a hawk. The builders, who were working not far down the hall, kept driving some kind of drill into the brickwork with a low, gloomy, grinding sound, which got into the bones of Anna’s chest. Francis crossed his legs like a younger version of his own father and balanced his cup on one knee. Every so often he cleared his throat deliberately, or rubbed his hands and said, ‘Tea!’ She looked at his out-at-elbow tweed jacket with the paperback copy of A Glastonbury Romance in the pocket and thought. Whatever will he do with himself in ten years’ time, fifteen? In that great box of a vicarage? This made her remember the last time she had called there; also how he had stood alone in the rain, under a tree, in full view of her Volvo.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Francis?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ she said hastily. ‘That’s good.’ She waited for him to ask, ‘And how are things with you?’ but found she hadn’t been able to wait long enough and had already gone on without planning to, ‘Things have been a bit hectic here.’ She was immediately full of contempt for herself.
But Francis didn’t seem to notice. ‘How’s John?’ he asked. ‘How are you coping, you two?’
Relief flooded through her. ‘Oh, Francis,’ she answered. ‘I can’t make him listen.’
Orlando, who knew how to choose his moment, leapt up next to the milk. She tried to brush him down, but he clung. The table rocked and everything was close to being spilt. The noise woke Eleanor, who looked around for her spoon and, not finding it, grizzled until Anna found it for her. ‘For God’s sake, Orlando,’ Anna said, blinking through real tears. ‘Can’t you once behave?’ Orlando looked hurt, but retreated only as far as the legs of Francis’s chair.
‘I’m sorry, Francis,’ Anna said. She was horrified to hear herself sniff loudly. ‘I don’t know
what’s the matter with us today.’
Francis – who greeted most domestic upsets with a formality which, Anna thought, disguised real distaste – said, ‘You mustn’t worry,’ then stopped, his expression stiff with something he couldn’t articulate, and cleared his throat again. Suddenly he looked less like Francis than a version of himself – the version who would end his career at St Mary’s, tired, gaunt, passed over for promotion because of his old-fashioned ideas. On the phone he had spoken as if nothing had happened since they last met. But she wondered if he had caught a cold that day in the rain under the chestnut tree, one of those colds that stay with you week after week.
‘Francis,’ she said. ‘You are looking after yourself, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded vague. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Oh, yes.’
The way he said this caused her an anxiety she couldn’t explain. ‘You are sure?’ she insisted. ‘Because if you’re not feeling well or anything—’ She let herself trail away. He was looking out of the window, as if he had seen something on the sodden lawn. ‘Francis?’
Francis cleared his throat again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Good.’ Now she had his attention, however, she didn’t seem to know what to do with it. She tried to tell him about Mark and Oliver. But how could she describe them? Without bringing in Stella Herringe and the events that had led up to the fire it was difficult to make them seem anything more than businessmen; and she ended up by saying, to her surprise, ‘I feel as if they’re edging me out of my own house.’ She paused. ‘I mean,’ she corrected herself, ‘that to get what they want they would edge me out.’ This sounded even more ridiculous, so she continued, ‘I don’t know what I mean.’ She shivered, wishing she could tell him all she knew, and – not really referring to Mark and Oliver at all – asked, ‘Do you think people can be evil?’
‘Yes,’ Francis said. ‘Good, too.’
This wasn’t much comfort.