The Mistressclass Page 13

  The woman who loved you was called Charlotte. She was clean and neat and had inky cuffs and was polite. She’s not that monster you hear racketing to and fro, locked up in the cellar, rattling the lock and crying to be let out. Oh—poor monster. Take pity on her. You call out, start up in bed; your wife soothes you, and you lie down again and sleep.

  But I, the nameless one; I prowl your house, your dreams; up and down, up and down; my mouth stuffed speechless with one of my own blank manuscripts.

  PART 12

  The day after the party was a Sunday. Even though Sunday was now Adam’s only time for writing, he began it with a lie-in, the luxury of long, uninterrupted sleep. Recently Robert had begun to crash about in his dreams and turn them into nightmares. But when Vinny slid in uninvited Adam smiled.

  Language was the site of dreams. You discovered a new element. You lowered yourself down through the surface of life, lifting the lid on the street, your legs dangling above runny words; a different fluency; those rivers, like the Fleet, that flowed secretly underneath the city, from Hampstead Heath down through Kentish Town towards the Thames. Sleep opened the door to that other world, that fairy kingdom glimpsed like a reflection in a calm lake; the inverse of the day-to-day. Mountains turned upside-down, so that to climb was to dive and to fall was to fly.

  When you were drifting towards sleep your boat took you through an archway cut in the rock, into a tunnel of water, and in this river leading underground the words of normal daily life broke free from their strings and casing and circled your heads like bats. Dreams flowed together, joining up your separate nights; you swam in them. Strange expressions formed on your tongue; you relished the salty peculiarity of words, how they wanted to shake loose and dance and form into phrases never heard before. New connections between words, new juxtapositions, half-lines of poetry: everything was happily crazy, topsy-turvy; it was fine; it was allowed; it was playtime.

  Once Adam was fully asleep he had entered that country of larking about, puns, jokes, balderdash, gobbledegook, helter-skelter translations. Like a children’s book, savage as Struwwelpeter, brightly illustrated with woodcut prints in primary colours, images aggressive as the serrated edges of sawn-open tin cans, fantasies cut into terrifying or erotic shapes. You were the emperor with powers of life and death; you were the enchanter turning enemies to stone. Refreshing, hurdy-gurdy stuff. But at the same time you were the unloved one hung upside-down and flayed alive; you were the traitor being disembowelled then burned; and you were the naked infant, starving and bawling, abandoned alone in the snow.

  Waking up meant surfacing from that deep country, your treasures gleaned below clutched in your arms; you kicked out and rose towards the day, broke free of the green waters, fell onto land. Then you saw your trove differently, by daylight: pearls turned to chips off milk-bottle lips, diamonds to sparkles of grit shovelled along the gutter, emeralds to the heels of wine bottles; turned again, to litter dropped on the shore, rubbed smooth by the sea. You were a scavenger sorting through other people’s rubbish, finding out what you considered beautiful: a length of green plastic tubing, driftwood bent into odd shapes, bleached chunks of bones.

  Vinny regularly scavenged along the Thames at low tide. Would you like to come with me next time? she asked, and he said yes. They walked east from Westminster, bent into the wind. He began telling her about the opening scene of Our Mutual Friend, the boat making its way down the Thames towards Tower Bridge, the terrified girl rowing her corpse-hunter father and their dreadful cargo, but Vinny interrupted him. Look at the sky. Pearly grey; high white trails of aeroplanes writing the names of drowned people. They climbed down onto the beach at Queenhythe. Vinny pointed. White tubular objects lodged in the sand. She bent down and picked them up, displaying them in her palm for Adam to see. Pieces of old clay pipes. Lengths of stem; fragments of bowl. She poured the creamy broken bits, clinking, into the deep pocket of his overcoat. She looked up at him. Olive-green eyes, the same colour as the river. Now her hand was full of something else she’d picked up. What was it? Show me, he begged. He kissed her. Her lips were soft and dry and tasted of salt.

  A gull screamed in his ear and he flinched away from the sharp beak. No, not a gull. A factory whistle. A danger signal. Wake up, Adam. Adam, get up.

  At some level, all night, he’d been aware of Catherine thrashing about, tossing off the covers, turning from side to side. Now, as the alarm beeped, he felt her roll away on her side of the bed, heard her yawn and sigh as she punched the button on top of the clock with unnecessary force. Gestures designed to prod him into waking. She wanted sympathy: she’d forgotten to turn off the alarm the night before. Sorry, Catherine, but that’s your fault. He fisted the sheet and pulled it over his face. He registered her bad temper in the heaviness of her footsteps, her soft oaths as she rummaged for clothes. He rolled over into the warm space she’d left, sealed his eyes shut, and plummeted back into the darkness. But the dream had vanished and would not return. It had ebbed out like the river tide, leaving flotsam in its wake: a phrase or two; the image of a closed hand.

  He pulled himself out of bed. Opened the curtains. Through the wreath of dripping clematis the sky was a marbly grey. The small green box of garden was dissolved to rain.

  Something white hovered at the far end of the oblong of grass. Adam put his hands on the window-sill, leaned forward, stared through the streaming glass.

  Robert. His father hunched silently in the rain, bareheaded, his shoulders streaming with wet, his arms dangling at his side. He looked patient and dogged, as though he’d been out there, waiting, all night.

  Adam blinked. His father lifted a hand, waved, and vanished. White blossoms jigged on the branches of the apple tree.

  Adam jerked the curtains to and went into the bathroom. His hands were shaking, so that he shaved too fast and cut himself. Back in the bedroom, he rummaged in the chest of drawers for a clean T-shirt. None to be seen. He went to the pine cupboard in which hung all his father’s clothes. Perhaps Catherine had made a mistake after doing the ironing and hurled all the clean linen in there. When he opened the door his father stared back at him. He was standing just inside, naked except for a pair of underpants.

  Even as he slammed the door shut Adam registered that Catherine had cleared out all Robert’s things. She hadn’t consulted him. She’d just bundled up all the old man’s clothes and got rid of them.

  He put yesterday’s T-shirt back on. He felt shuddering and sick. He told himself the nausea was just a hangover. It was not going to stop him getting down to work. Everything was going to be all right. It was only mid-morning. Ten or so. Plenty of time. He had the place to himself and three hours until lunchtime.

  He lurched into the kitchen, rubbing his chin and yawning, to make coffee. The radio barked: a scratch of newsreader voices. Catherine was jabbing with the tip of the bread knife at a domed stain, crusted like a scar, on top of the cooker. From the doorway he watched her lunging gestures. Not delicate enough to be fencing. As though she were disembowelling an enemy. The dream stirred in him. He recognised the stain, a burnt black spread, lacy and crisp, as spilled melted cheese from last night’s canapés.

  —Hi, he said.

  She turned her back and grunted.

  Their agreement, now that the boys had gone away and he’d taken up the carpentry job at the gallery, was that she wouldn’t be around on Sunday mornings. He was left alone, which meant he didn’t have to speak to anyone, could let his mind rest undisturbed, still in the world of the unconscious. Then the first line of a paragraph could come, floating easily into the calm space surrounding him. He was soothed by the emptiness of the house, could flow out and inhabit it while he slapped butter onto toast and tipped milk into coffee. He didn’t have to have ego, edges. If he could begin Sunday properly, which meant by himself, in peace, then he could choose how to organise his work, how to use the time, discover exactly what he needed to do. With another person rattling about, obtruding their personality, his w
riting self shrank back inside its shell. Words killed stone dead.

  —Why haven’t you gone out? he said: what’s wrong?

  She picked up on his tone immediately. He saw her trying not to snap back. She raised her voice above the blare of news.

  —I’ve been finishing the clearing-up from last night.

  He walked over to the radio and turned the sound down.

  —I’m going out in a minute, Catherine said: I thought I might go to Spitalfields market. But it doesn’t get going much before eleven. I told you last night, before the party, I’d be leaving later than usual. Why can’t you remember?

  —Too much booze, he said: all your fault.

  This ancient and feeble joke failed to pacify her. She glared at him. He gazed about, rubbing his nose, for the electric kettle. Someone had moved it, he could swear. Catherine flung knife and sponge in his direction. He dodged as they flew past him and landed in the sink.

  She opened the fridge, got out some eggs, cracked them into a bowl, whisked them together. She laid two slices of bread under the grill.

  —Not scrambled eggs again, Adam said.

  —They’re for me, Catherine said: I’ll be out all day. Give you some peace and quiet. That arts festival on the South Bank is still on. I’ll go to that after Spitalfields. If I’m not here this afternoon then you’ll be able to get more writing done.

  —You don’t have to do that, Adam said: don’t be such a martyr. It’s your Sunday as well.

  Catherine clattered the whisk onto the table, where it dribbled yellow. She fetched a saucepan from the cupboard and set it on the stove. She dug out a lump of butter from the butter-dish and scraped it into the pan.

  —I’m not being a martyr. I’m just trying to help. And last night Charlie suggested I might like to drop into the gallery sometime and have a look at it. See how things are coming along. I haven’t been inside for ages.

  Catherine poured the liquid eggs into the hot butter. She began to stir them with a wooden spoon.

  —He won’t be there on a Sunday, Adam said: he sees his daughter on Sundays.

  —He’s divorced? Catherine asked: I didn’t know he’d been married.

  —He’ll want us to think about going over to France soon, Adam said: check whether there are any paintings there we’ve forgotten about. Make some slides to show him.

  Once the boys were in late teenage they had become bored with country holidays. Adam and Catherine had ceased taking them to visit Robert in the Sarthe so often. He’d stopped running his summer painting classes, and now he increasingly let out the house as a gîte. He emptied it of anything worth stealing, and locked up his few valuables, together with his paintings, away from visitors’ prying eyes.

  —Where have we put the key of the shed where he keeps everything? Adam asked: I suppose it’s upstairs somewhere.

  —I don’t think we ever had it here, Catherine said: it must still be in France.

  She spooned scrambled eggs onto toast.

  —Why don’t we ask Vinny to go over for us? she said: her residency’s finished, she’s planning to visit Jeanne in any case, she’s bound to be broke. We could pay her to take some slides and do some clearing-up at the same time. If you’re going to sell Les Deux Saintes, it’ll need emptying.

  —Poor little Vinny, Adam said: I didn’t realise she was broke. She never lets on.

  —Not so little as all that, Catherine said: she’s fifty-two. And actually she’s rather overweight.

  Adam began to rummage on the dresser.

  —Where do we keep aspirins? I’ve got a headache.

  Catherine stood by the door, holding her plate of breakfast. She spoke in a light, controlled voice.

  —By the way, the dishwasher’s out of order. And we ought to wash this floor. It’s absolutely filthy.

  —We can do it tonight, for heaven’s sake, Adam said: I’ve got a lot of work to do today.

  —And then lavatory paper, Catherine said: we’re nearly out of it.

  —Calm down, Catherine. I’ll go out and get some later, OK?

  —Don’t you tell me to calm down, she shouted: just take some responsibility for this bleeding household, that’s all I ask.

  —Fuck off, he shouted back.

  She slammed her plate down on the table and stormed out. He swallowed some aspirin, discovered there was no coffee. They’d used it all up at the party. He made himself a pot of tea instead, and took it upstairs to his workroom.

  He lit a cigarette and tried to think. He couldn’t concentrate. Anger boiled inside him like hot oil. Useless. He could do nothing until it subsided. Nowadays, working for Charlie, he was always too tired in the evenings to do anything but slump in front of the TV. All he had were these few hours once a week. He must try not to be beaten by his bad mood. He stubbed out his cigarette, breathed deeply, swigged his tea.

  The room scraped at him, its shapes and colours jarring. The wooden Noah’s Ark on the side table, which he’d made for the boys when they were small, filled him with desolation. They hadn’t e-mailed for two weeks. They had sailed off and perhaps were capsized; lost. Not so long ago they were giggly creatures with whom he could wrestle on the floor, babies whom he could pick up, one in each hand. You blinked, and they’d become taller than you, patting you fondly on the head before strapping on their ridiculous great rucksacks, snails lurching along under their domed houses, and departing on the New Age hippie trail. Perhaps they’d fall in love with India so much they’d never come back.

  The window was a grey blank, a glass sheet of water like the side of an aquarium. As he glanced away from it, something white flicked past the corner of his vision, glimmered outside in the garden. He twitched the curtains shut. He picked up a book and tried to read. The words danced up and down. He willed himself not to open a crack in the curtains, not to look out of the window. Robert was not there. He’d been tidied up and thrown away by his daughter-in-law. How practical, how ruthless, Catherine could be. She had refused to have the plastic jar of Robert’s ashes in the house. Put them on the garden if you want. Some days after the cremation, therefore, Adam had dug a hole in the rose-bed and emptied the ashes into it. Then he had put a mulch of compost on top, and a neat green turf like a lid.

  His resentment went on hammering in his brain. Now Catherine was on the telephone in the hall. Her voice echoed up the stairs. Presumably complaining to one of her women friends. He felt her presence like sandpaper on his skin. She came at him through all these feet of separating air, pursuing him. Making sure he heard her feeling hurt, feeling misunderstood. Tramping about downstairs, opening and shutting cupboards, letting doors bang, clacking across the tiled floor of the kitchen. The front door slammed. She’d gone out at last.

  He unlocked the filing cabinet, took out the tumbler and the bottle of vodka, poured himself a stiff one. He sat back in his swivel chair, put his feet up on the edge of the open steel drawer. The vodka swept down his throat. It was like a caress. He poured another.

  The inner tumult began to subside. Warm now, and blurry. The alcohol pushed the rage away to the other end of the room. At the same time it built a spike of resistance inside him. A knife sheathed in velvet. If anyone did come barging in now he would rise, seize them by the scruff of the neck, drop them out of the window. Offer them up to that white jiggery-pokery in the garden.

  He suddenly wished that Vinny would ring him. Or simply arrive. Stand outside his castle walls and call up: can Adam come out to play? He wanted to go for a walk with her, somewhere in the centre of town, explore the deserted streets and alleys of the City, or stroll by the river, watching the way that the sharp wind whipped pink into her pale cheeks. Vinny didn’t continually criticise him. She talked about other things than dishwashers and dirty floors. They could argue about writing, her absurd theories of the imagination as an inner, unconscious space versus his of a sort of moon rocket. The point of the imagination was that it let you get away from yourself. From your known self, Vinny said. It let you
travel, Adam insisted. We’re talking about the same journey in different words, Vinny said. Escape. As the boys were doing.

  The vodka made his heart both warm and cold. Ever since the boys left home and went off on their trip, a month before Robert’s death, Catherine had been moody and strange. Perhaps she minded that they hadn’t offered to come back for the funeral. Perhaps she simply missed them. He did too, but he had more sense than to try to hold on to them, make them feel guilty for wanting to get away. He sensed that Catherine was discontented but in what way he didn’t know. Rather than telling him what was the matter, she had started going on at him, trying to get him to do what she called opening up. She kept probing him, urging him to talk about his feelings. What he was feeling was depressed, but he suspected she didn’t really want him to tell her about it. She just wanted to say the right, sensitive, womanly thing. To appear correct and loving. Tick for behaving well. Then she had the high moral ground yet again and he was just this pathetic male. Well, fuck her. He’d had enough.

  He padded downstairs to the telephone, and called Vinny.

  When she answered, there was an echo on the line. A roaring, rushing sound, as though they were under the sea.

  —Are you free this afternoon? Adam asked: would you like to meet somewhere for a cup of tea?

  Her voice came to him warmly and immediately, as though she were breathing very gently next to him, her lips brushing his ear.

  —I can’t today. I’m writing. It’ll have to be tomorrow. After that I’ll be gone.

  —If you’re planning to go to France, he said: would you be able to check the house for us? Take some photographs of Robert’s pictures?

  —Catherine already asked me, Vinny said: she rang me earlier this morning, and I said yes. She told me more about the show as well. I hadn’t realised it could happen so soon. That’s great news, Adam.