The Knot Garden

  ‘He writes them down,’ Stella interrupted, ‘in a book he keeps beside the bed.’ She smiled sleepily across at Anna. ‘Don’t ask me how I know that.’

  ‘—I was sitting here, at dinner. The table was laid just as you see it now.’ He made a gesture that took in the whole of the Painted Room. ‘There were candles everywhere, just as there are now, throwing odd shadows on the walls. That bloody awful painting lay there in wait for us all, the way it always does. In some way, I knew it was this evening. Here’s the only difference: I was sitting where Max is now, and opposite me sat a woman.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Stella. ‘Which one?’

  ‘I never saw her face.’

  ‘Another cop-out!’ Max cried happily.

  ‘Do you think so?’ John asked him. ‘Is that what you think? She sat opposite me and she held my hands in hers. Have you ever been rendered powerless by a touch? I was so sexually attracted to her that I could barely breathe; and I knew, even though I couldn’t see her face, that she was tremendously beautiful.’

  Stella began to smile. It made her look twenty or thirty years younger.

  ‘I was afraid of her. She had asked me for something I was unable to give. I wanted to give it: don’t think I didn’t. I had refused less out of fear than out of sheer sexual paralysis.’

  He stopped. ‘Have you ever felt that?’ he asked Max. ‘Have you ever wanted someone so much you simply couldn’t take them? Only men ever feel that,’ he added bitterly. And then before Max could say anything: ‘I felt a tingling sensation in my arms. When I looked down, I could see swirling silver patterns appearing on my hands, starting at the fingertips and spiralling past my wrists; then up my forearms in great complex, knotted patterns, almost Celtic in form, the lines crossing and recrossing as if to bind me. And these patterns were so entrancing that although I knew they bound me to her, I could never break them.’

  He looked down at his hands, as if he could see the patterns there now. ‘I knew I would have her for the rest of my life,’ he said brutally. ‘I knew I would never have her. In some way, she had made herself available and unavailable to me in exactly the same gesture. She was a shaman. I was bound.’

  Anna’s chest felt constricted. She realised she had been holding her breath.

  ‘My, my,’ said Stella softly. Her skin glowed in the candlelight; her eyes were bright.

  Max looked round the table, let his gaze rest on Anna. ‘Someone’s clearly got designs on you,’ he said to John.

  Anna blushed and looked away.

  John sat bolt upright. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, someone’s got designs—’ began Max.

  ‘Not that,’ John interrupted him contemptuously. ‘Listen. That. I thought I heard a cat.’

  The room fell quiet. Anna shivered. ‘I heard a cat in here this summer,’ she said. ‘But Stella never has them in the house.’

  John Dawe got unsteadily to his feet, pushed rudely past Stella at the end of the table and announced, ‘I’ve got to piss.’

  *

  In the wake of this gesture, no one could think of anything to say. And when, after fifteen minutes or so, it was clear that John wasn’t coming back, supper lost its momentum. The atmosphere of the Painted Room would no longer support conversation. In the silences that stretched out between increasingly dull attempts. Max interested himself in the mural. Stella poured more brandy, and stared listlessly ahead of herself, her lips moving as if she was rehearsing some old argument with her cousin. Anna poured herself some mineral water: something – the brandy, the tension, the smell of stale candle smoke – had given her a headache. She didn’t think things could get much worse. Then Max turned to her and said carelessly:

  ‘And how’s my favourite cat, then?’

  Anna couldn’t think what he meant. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How’s old Barnaby doing?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’ She frowned. Then she said flatly. ‘He’s dead. He was run over the week after you left.’

  When she looked up and saw the stricken expression on Max’s face, she knew she had gone too far. But nothing she could think of adding would make the situation any better.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a myth, of course, about them having nine lives,’ said Stella, as if she was one of an elect few who had seen through this old wives’ tale. ‘Just a misreading of the reincarnation themes which leaked out of Egypt via the Mediterranean cultures in the millennium before Christ.’ She stared at Anna. She was very drunk, Anna realised. ‘Take my word for it,’ she said. ‘They were fertility symbols, nothing else.’

  Anna’s head started to spin.

  This woman is mad, she said to herself, then out loud: ‘Excuse me.’ She walked quickly out of the Painted Room and with what she thought was remarkable presence of mind considering the rush of brandy to her head, managed to find the little bathroom attached to Stella’s apartment. There, soothed by the cool white walls and minimal fittings, she sat perched on the toilet with her head in her hands and cried with rage and mortification. The whole event had been a disaster.

  She washed her face. When she looked in the bathroom mirror, her eyes, dark with misery and self-loathing, stared at her over the top of the pristine white towel. How could she possibly go back inside that room without killing Stella Herringe? She looked at her watch. It was almost twelve.

  She retrieved her jacket from the caterers and stepped out into the cold, damp autumn air. Of John Dawe there was no sign.

  The taxi came for her just after midnight.

  ‘See you didn’t turn into a pumpkin, then,’ said Alice’s ex.

  ‘It was the coach that turned into a pumpkin,’ she reminded him, ‘not Cinderella.’ She looked down at herself. ‘But have it your way.’

  *

  Back at the cottage, she tore off the long black dress and stuffed it disgustedly into the back of the wardrobe. She changed into an old, but comfortable, brushed cotton nightdress, made herself a cup of chocolate and curled up on the sofa with Vita and Dellifer and a Joanna Trollope novel she had bought in the bookshop in Drychester. She was just ebbing away from herself, slipping comfortably into the story, when there was a knock at the front door. Vita leapt off the sofa excitedly and ran aimlessly about. Dellifer tucked her nose under her paws and made a huffing noise as if irritated at the disturbance. Through the diamond of bossed glass in the front door, Anna could make out a face, framed by blond hair.

  It was Max Wishart. He had a cat in his arms.

  Anna put her book down carefully, pulled her robe around her and opened the door.

  ‘I found this rascal sitting in the middle of the road,’ he said, offering her the cat, which turned out to be Orlando. ‘For a minute I thought it was Barnaby.’

  Orlando, who never much liked being picked up, squirmed briefly in Anna’s hands, jumped to the ground and legged it out of the door and into the front garden. He sat there for a time licking his fur in an affronted manner, then vanished into the bushes.

  ‘You never used to let Barnaby out at night,’ Max said.

  ‘That was London,’ Anna said firmly. ‘This is Ashmore. Things are different here.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Why are you here, Max?’

  ‘Stella invited me.’

  ‘No, I mean why are you here, now, at nearly one o’clock, in my cottage? Max, we haven’t seen each other for two years. What did you think we might have to say to one another?’

  ‘I came to apologise,’ he said. ‘For this evening.’

  Anna regarded him steadily. ‘That’s new,’ she said.

  ‘Anna—’

  ‘The man I lived with would never have apologised for anything. He’d have just slipped away in his usual bloody solipsistic dream. Moi? Hurt anyone? How could I? I’m Max.’ She turned away from him and began to shut the door in his face. ‘I’m too ornamental for that. And you are. Max, you are. Barnaby was more use than you.’

  He held
on to the door. ‘Anna, listen—’

  ‘Bugger off, Max.’

  ‘Listen: I deserved that,’ he said.

  She stared at him. ‘There’s something the matter with you. Max. Isn’t there?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘You’d better come in. Do you want a cup of tea?’

  Once inside, he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He looked around at the CD shelves, the TV, as if he had never been in a house before. He picked up the Joanna Trollope, put it down again. He tickled Dellifer under her bony chin and said, ‘Well now, and what’s your name?’ (Dellifer purred politely, but Anna could see she hadn’t fallen for it.) He came into the kitchen and stared at the kettle on the Aga.

  ‘Look, Max, you don’t have to follow me everywhere. For heaven’s sake go and sit down.’

  ‘I hardly know Stella Herringe. I had no idea why she wanted me there.’ He saw that Anna didn’t believe him. ‘I’ve got fans,’ he said. ‘You know that. They come to the concerts, they buy the CDs, they—’ He shrugged tiredly. ‘She was very insistent. I assumed it was something like that.’

  Anna laughed bitterly. ‘Oh, I bet you did, Max.’

  ‘Anna, listen to me—’

  ‘Oh, I know. Max. All that stuff at the dinner table was perfectly deliberate. She set me up, and I fell for it. All those years at TransCorp, dealing with men who would have killed each other – let alone me – for my job, and I allow some old bitch to manipulate me back to my teenage days – no confidence, lots of guilt, not knowing how to defend myself. Well, it won’t happen again, you can be sure of that.’

  Max looked at her intently. ‘You’ve got between those two, and it’s a dangerous place to be. That’s all I wanted to say.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Anna. ‘Max, I lived with you, remember? What is it? Why did you come here?’

  When he still didn’t answer, she said: ‘I can take care of myself, Max. Here’s your tea. Please come through and sit down and drink it and then go.’ But although he wandered obediently out of the kitchen, she couldn’t get him to sit down. He stood in the tiny room, the teacup in his hand, while she bustled around him trying to tidy things up. His head brushed the central ceiling beam. Eventually he said: ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out for us—’

  ‘It didn’t “not work out” for us, Max. You walked away from it.’

  ‘—and I’m really, really sorry about Barnaby.’ Suddenly, tears filled his eyes. He looked blindly around for somewhere to put down his cup. She got up and took it from him. She held his hands. His strong, calloused violinist’s fingers lay passively in hers; they were cold.

  ‘Anna, I’m ill.’

  ‘Max!’

  ‘They don’t know what it is. They’re doing a spinal tap next week.’ His face crumpled. He said in a strained and muffled voice: ‘They think it may be MS.’

  ‘Oh, Max—’

  ‘What’s life worth, Anna? What’s it worth when this can happen to you?’

  Anna threw her arms around him. Whatever he had been to her – whatever he had done to her – he was just a man now, in need of help. How thin he had got! She could feel the bones of his shoulder blades under the palms of her hands, even through the wool of his coat. She could feel him tremble. ‘Sh,’ she whispered. ‘Max, shh.’ She put her hands on either side of his face and made him look at her. ‘It will be all right. I promise you.’

  He clung to her like a child.

  They were standing there like that, in the middle of her front room with the lights full on and the curtains wide open, when she saw a face at the window.

  ‘Max!’

  She tried to pull herself away, but he only buried his face in her shoulder and clung on harder, so that they tottered about together in a ghastly two-step of despair and frustration.

  ‘Max!’ she said harshly. ‘Let go of me!’

  John Dawe stared in at them for a moment. Then he was gone.

  18

  Anna stood on the doorstep listening to the wind. There was no sign of John Dawe. All she could think was: I must catch him, I must talk to him, I mustn’t let him think the wrong thing. She went back inside, where she found Max slumped on the sofa with his eyes closed.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go out.’

  He didn’t seem to hear her. His face looked grey and tired and he couldn’t stop stroking the cat. Dellifer, looking uncomfortable but flattered, accommodated him with a kind of dusty purr.

  Anna bent down and put her hand over his. ‘Max? Are you all right?’

  He opened his eyes.

  ‘Max, you’re being a bit rough with her.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ said Anna, as if he had asked. She tried to get her Barbour jacket off the back of the kitchen door and pull on her Wellington boots at the same time; dashed upstairs in a futile search for her torch, her house keys, her purse for which she would have no earthly use in Ashmore village at two in the morning.

  ‘Make yourself another cup of tea or something,’ she told Max. ‘Anything you like. There’s plenty of food—’

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said, stroking the cat. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  She stared down at him. He gave her a vague smile. She had a feeling of her life flying apart with his.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. Max!’ she begged. ‘Do something with yourself!’

  *

  Ashmore had no streetlights. This was a blessing on a clear night, when Cassiopeia and the Plough arranged themselves like chains of paste on jeweller’s velvet, and even an untutored eye could sometimes make out the smoky red dot of Mars; less so on a cloudy one, when you were looking for a man. The village pond, ruffled yet contemplative, presented a grey curve to the street. There were no lights in the houses. Anna squinted anxiously right and left but saw nothing to convince her John Dawe had passed either way. There were only two places, she decided, in which to look for him. He would go to the Magpie, and sulk; or back to Nonesuch, to be comforted – if that was the word – by his cousin.

  A couple of hundred yards up the road, at the junction by the church, she bet on the latter, and was rewarded by glimpses of a dark figure moving purposefully north.

  ‘John!’ she cried. ‘John!’

  He gave no sign that he had heard. She went after him down Allbright Lane at a sort of trudging, indecorous trot, her rubber boots slapping painfully against the backs of her bare calves. A stitch bent her double. A single gust of wind roared off the edge of the downs, flailed in the hedgerows, tore her voice out of her mouth. It was gone as soon as it arrived, leaving behind a steady, streaming rain. John Dawe walked fast, with his hands in his pockets and his head down into the weather, but as long as she kept running she made up ground. This went on for some minutes; then he must have heard her calling out, because he looked back over his shoulder and he began to run too. It was the most hurtful response she had ever experienced.

  ‘John!’ she shrieked.

  He hesitated, then shrugged and reluctantly allowed her to catch up. As soon as she got close – perhaps with an idea of keeping some distance between them – he began to walk backwards away from her. He was out of breath. I’m not talking,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk.’ His clothes were soaked, his face white and drawn. He kept his gaze focused away from her, and an angry, inturned smile on his face.

  ‘John, it’s not what you think.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘He’s an old friend, John, and he’s not well.’

  ‘He’s an old lover. You said so yourself.’

  ‘I’m a grown-up, John. You are too. Only children come without a past.’

  He started to say something, shrugged.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There is something,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  She tried to take his hands, but he moved away. She began talking quickly, in case he took flight again. ‘Max and I meant
something to one another once. Now he’s frightened and he needs help. Look,’ she appealed, ‘I never wanted to see him again. But in a way I’m glad this happened, because it could bring him back into my life as what he ought to be – an old friend.’

  If she had made up any ground she lost it here. ‘How nice and modern,’ he jeered.

  She looked down miserably. ‘He’s no threat to you.’

  John Dawe shook his head, as if that wasn’t the issue, and the two of them just stood there again until after some time he said: ‘Look, I know I haven’t any right to be jealous. I just hoped we meant something to each other.’ This struck her as disingenuous.

  ‘It’s too late for coat-trailing,’ she said. ‘Of course we did.’

  ‘“Did”?’

  ‘Oh, grow up,’ she advised him bitterly, adding before she could prevent herself, ‘Stella brought him here, not me. Ask her why. Ask her why she spent the evening trying to get a lever between us!’ He stared at her for a moment then deliberately turned and walked away. She let him go. ‘Run back to the family, then!’ she heard herself shout. ‘I’m so sick of men!’ He turned a corner, and the high black hedges covered him from view.

  ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

  She stood there for some time in her nightdress and wellingtons, shivering and uncertain of her feelings. She was upset and hurt. But she was irritated with herself too, and angry with John: so in the end – though the sanest course would have been to go home, apologise to Max and make him comfortable in her tiny spare room, then curl up to sleep with her cat – she gathered her resources, pulled the clammy Barbour jacket around her, and plodded after him. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, at a bend in the road. Nonesuch offered itself to her out of the sodden darkness.

  *

  Two in the morning and the great front doors – designed by Bramber Herringe and his wife Juliette after a visit to India in the last decade of the seventeenth century, to be hand-built somewhat later by local craftsmen – were firmly closed. The caterers’ van had departed, leaving muddy tracks on the grass where it had been manoeuvred carelessly into the drive. Stella’s Mercedes gleamed with rain in its usual parking space. The lady of the house was at home, then: asleep, perhaps, dreaming the balloon-dream, unaware of the events she had set in motion. Of John Dawe there was no sign.