The Unforgotten, page 20
She got up and went quickly along a dark yellow hall that smelled of oilcloth. The linoleum was stained. She opened a closet and lifted down a suitcase. Victoria offered to help but the woman didn’t answer. Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there. Other closets were opened, a table moved, then she came back with an old student’s notebook. “I never was able to throw it away.”
It was James Hamilton’s diary. The writing was hardly touched by the passing of time. It would be legible for a hundred years to come.
Monday night.
Alice, this is for you. I sit in the hut waiting for Charley to die. He’s not in such pain now. I don’t think he’ll last long. I try and recall your face, your body. I get your eyes. Can’t capture the mouth. Then you are there, wonderfully clear, smiling at me. I long for your hands. How they excite me, give pleasure. Charley’s making a lot of noise now. I try and escape back to you. I’ve given him another injection.
A terrible time, then he’s gone. You’re all blurred, your features, unsatisfactory. I must get them right.
Oh, Alice …
Friday.
Oh, I’d have met you, Alice. If I’d gone to the other end of the world, if I’d changed my name, if I’d married and had Five children, I would still at 7:28 on that particular evening have held out my hand to you in that same way. Everything slowed down. Something lovely was happening. A glow came into the room. But we never touched. Then you said something and the resonance seemed to linger. You’d not taken your eyes from my face.
From James to Alice
“Yes,” murmured Alice. “Meeting James Hamilton was predestined, I agree with that. I couldn’t have avoided it. He was a wonderful lover.”
“Did girls do it in those days generally?”
“You’d be a fool not to do it when a man like James Hamilton asks you. You’re a bit old-fashioned, you are,” she added wryly.
“How can you live without such passion?” murmured Victoria.
“You do. What’s more, you forget, even the unforgettable. In the end, you forget.” She sounded tired.
“There was one card from a church in Chester. Is that where he’s buried?”
“Could be. His people came from there.”
“One thing I never understood. Seeing he died in nineteen sixteen, why were the cards from your friends so cheerful?”
“They didn’t know about it.” She sounded shocked.
“Thank you, Alice. My friend Sylvia — she’s a nurse, also — and I were very moved by your postcards. You had a real love affair. You’re so lucky.”
Alice was amused. “Have a happy marriage.”
“And how does one do that?”
“Don’t get into too much of a rut. Get up in the morning as though it’s a new beginning. If I had my time again that’s what I’d do. Don’t let things get too dull. It doesn’t do love any good.”
As Victoria walked to the underground she believed she’d given James Hamilton back to Alice. She’d made her see how special her love affair was. After all, it could still kindle a response in other, modern women. James Hamilton was a jewel untouched by time, encapsulated in brightness, safe, not allowed to deteriorate by everyday habit. Ruth was like that, too. Safe in the past.
*
Sylvia lay along the edge of her father’s bathtub like a shabby tiger. She was defeated, clawless, toothless, but she was still dangerous. The short spell at her father’s house had been forced to an ending a second time, and she was desolate.
“I spoke to my analyst about Gerry. Not that it’s the sort of love they approve of. Too straight.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Victoria would never let a medical man near her pain, twisting it to suit his expensive diagnosis. “Look, Gerry’s all right to me. It’s the house. That twisted arch leading to the garden, like a gibbet. Nothing about it wishes me well. I’m beginning to think I’m better with someone bad. I felt easy with Alex because I could tell him what I was thinking, wanting. It didn’t matter because there was nothing to ruin. No perfection. I mean it was once perfect with Gerry. It really was. Alex made you feel okay about your bad side. The more black and mad a person’s behavior, the more sense he could make of it.”
“It’s all that red hair,” Alice had said. That was something James had in common with Alex.
“Perhaps you should see him again?” Sylvia tried to make the suggestion casual.
“He was too much for me, too. He made me feel I wasn’t alive enough. My mother makes me frightened. You make me think I’m a prude. I’m the one who’s always scared of taking the wrong road, embracing the wrong man. I turned a corner and ended up with Gerry.”
“There are no right roads, wrong turnings, Mr. Rights, exhausting Mr. Wrongs. Find another relationship and get back your confidence.”
“A relationship? What’s that, Syl? A relationship for you could be anything slightly longer than twenty minutes.”
“So what? I call one night with a loving, caring man a relationship.”
“If it’s that good, why does it have to be only one night?”
“They’re invariably married, of course. There’s a lot to be said for it. The married ones are especially therapeutic.” Victoria’s expression hardened.
“Oh, don’t go religious on me, Vee, please.”
“I’ve always left them alone.” Lies. Alexander was married. “I got that from my mother. She always said it’s wrong to take a married man because you’re taking something from his wife. You’re having what he should be giving to her and you’re inevitably paid back for it.”
“Muck for an analyst. You don’t take a man away from his wife. You couldn’t unless he wanted to go. Sleep with someone else. Put yourself together. You come first.”
Richard Holly, wearing a green smoking jacket, appeared without warning in the doorway to tell them they were to stay for dinner. In one hand he held a glass of whiskey made safe by a dozen ice cubes. In the other, some kind of herbal cigarette. He was always trying to make vice safe. He proposed plans for controlling the famous author’s drinking. He really meant Sylvia’s drinking.
“Stick to light white wine and nothing after dinner, Sylvia,” Victoria said. “Professor Gully’s coming.”
Sylvia made an obscene gesture, and Richard Holly retreated. Victoria was sure he regretted everything about his involvement with the Jago family except the commission he got from the book sales.
“I can’t face that house,” Victoria said. “Ruth is just a thought away. Everything is a celebration of Ruth. What she did, what she wore —”
“If you didn’t feel so inferior, if you weren’t Miss Wrong all the time, there’d be no need for a Mr. Right. It’s that same inferiority that’s made a ghost of Ruth Holt.”
“But she’s in the fucking bedroom. She even has her own sound.”
Sylvia looked infuriatingly blank. Unhealthy threesomes could get her excited, but an attack by a vengeful ghost didn’t interest her at all.
“I dreamed this screaming, mad apparition because I feel inferior to Ruth Holt. Also, I feel guilty because he really belongs to her. That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”
“I don’t have to. You’ve just said it.”
“You’d put your head in a bucket of shit if your analyst told you to.”
“You’re obsessed.”
“At least I’m not obsessed with my father and boringly drunk all the time.”
“You’re going along the right road to getting yourself a new maid of honor.”
Victoria ran down the stairs to the front door. Sylvia caught her on the step and held her tight. “The phantoms are your own, Vee. Get rid of these shadowy virtues that you believe direct life. Like signposts, they’re supposed to point to the right road, but they’re more like tombstones. They’ve led you into a hell of a mess. Right, wrong, they don’t come from God. They come from your mother. Go and see Alex and get some sense into yourself. He’s real.”
“I might if I knew where he lived,” said Victoria sulkily.
Sylvia wrote an address on the back of an envelope. “I didn’t need any clairvoyant to tell me who was sending the postcards.”
Chapter 26
ALEXANDER WAS STAYING WITH A GROUP OF DELINQUENTS IN Kentish Town. Sylvia had got the address from his first wife, not the current one, whose ignorance of his whereabouts boded ill for the new marriage.
Once Victoria had found the house she didn’t want to go in. She’d rather remember Alex as he had been than be confronted with another installment of change and supercharged excitement that would only make her miss him when it was time to leave, she told herself. She had more in common with Alice than she’d supposed. Alex was like James Hamilton. Safe in the past. He couldn’t be spoiled. It’s the ones that are with us now that are the trouble. She’d missed out. She’d been bobbed off. Gerry wants peace, not passion. Why didn’t she bring out the passion in him? Lilly did. There was something lustful about them, even when they quarreled. Especially when they quarreled. But he didn’t want intensity anymore, and he was a man who only got what he wanted.
She would have walked away from the Kentish Town house, but she wanted to know why he’d sent the postcards. The front door was unlatched, the hallway blackened from a recent fire. Alex was pretending to work but actually he was having his idea of a good time. His companions’ main occupation was sniffing glue, which was cheaper and more available than drugs. Alex lived as one of them while working on a series of paintings of their lives. The glue worried him. “The thing is, I like a drink.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“They think I’m old-fashioned.”
“You’re so much older than they. Don’t they distrust you? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Not all the time; I give them money for speed. I prefer hash myself, but they think that’s passe, too.” His smile, his carroty, spiky hair made him appear joyful. He wore an old black woolen sweater with holes in the elbows. “It’s rather nice, isn’t it?” he said. “The material. Feel. It belongs to Wild Hugh, who runs the house.” The veins were big in his arms and throbbing with energy or high blood pressure. She thought the glue was probably a mistake. He slept on a pile of newspapers in the corner. It all looked sparse and admirable, but she suspected he ran off to one of his wives whenever he’d had enough. When he smiled, she was reminded how much she’d loved him. He touched her and she discovered the feeling was not altogether dead.
She looked away, said coolly, “I’m not visiting. I’ve come for the postcard album.”
He got it out from under the pile of newspapers and didn’t bother asking how she’d traced it to him. A few cards were still hanging from broken hinges. Nothing from James.
1936.
Dear Alice,
Just a line to let you know we are having a gorgeous June. Lovely sunshine.
“What is it that makes Mrs. Hunter no longer Miss Murray?” asked Alex. “Is the change reflected in the sender of the card? Why does she choose weather and not fun?” He wiped his brushes and admired the houses across the street. Like Gerry, he could turn people on to what he liked.
Suddenly two young hoods kicked open the door and asked for money. They found Victoria’s attractiveness threatening and said so with expletives. Alex pulled out a roll of ten-pound notes and gave them three. The sight of all the money made them jeer. They believed he got it from screwing women. They weren’t altogether wrong.
“Is that enough? Do you want a twenty?” asked Alex, kindly.
“Fuck off, cunt.” They taunted Victoria.
“Cunt!” The door slammed.
She could think of nothing to say about that, and it was too prosaic for Alex to comment on.
“How’s the don?”
“He’s all right.”
He looked into her eyes, saw what he wanted. She supposed it was uncertainty. “How’s your new wife?”
“She’s fine. Let’s have a drink.”
“Why did you send them?”
“Let’s talk about you. I want to know why you wrote to all those movie stars when you were a kid. Is that what you wanted to be? A star?” He laughed. “Is it?”
“You’re after my dreams again. You want to take them over.”
“So what? I’ve given you others.”
“It’s one way to take people over. Giving them dreams. So why did you send the cards?”
“Because those two knew a thing about love, about making it.” There was a nasty pause, and she felt he was undermining her. “You make it like you make anything else. It should be a practical thing, like making pastry.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said cynically.
“Then if you’re lucky, the other little touches come in.”
“Are you criticizing my performance then?”
“I took you to the fence but you always shied back like the horses you’re so fond of. I’m not thinking only of the physical aspect. There are parts of yourself you just can’t acknowledge, so other people get their hands on them and you end up at Ascot and Glyndebourne and —”
“Isn’t that my business?”
“And mine. It means you’re only half alive. Why be like that?”
“Perhaps it’s the fear of jumping the fence and finding nothing on the other side.”
“Oh, come on. You’re brighter than that.”
He rolled a cigarette from the butts on the floor; he had a lot to choose from. Even that action had something compelling about it. She always had to watch him, whatever he did.
“It’s very dirty in here.” She needed something to say. “So the postcards were meant to take me to the fence again?”
“What does your fiancée think? Doesn’t he expose you? All those defensive —”
“This picture is marvelous, Alex.”
“I wondered when you’d get around to that. You’re the same. You go around the exterior disapproving of everything. Only then can you come to the center and approve.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would.”
In the past he’d challenged her. He’d wanted to burn her down, then reconstruct something better. Analysts, so Sylvia said, did that. He wasn’t an analyst. That kind of thing was too slow and dreary for him. He was more an arsonist. When she was with him in Paris, she’d begun to hate her county mannerisms, her selfish small thoughts, her ordinariness. He’d forced her to live for the moment, dropping all preconceived ideas about how to get through the day. It was his idea that she take off her clothes and walk a tightrope in public. He exposed all defensive acts, especially in bed.
“Gerry de Santos doesn’t question me, only soothes me. Thinking about you is all right from the safety of Haslemere.”
“Or Oxford. That sounds like the same sort of thing.”
“What right have you to say that?”
“I would take you further into yourself than you’ve been before. Surely you remember.”
“You never left me alone, I remember that.”
“Wasn’t there anything you liked about it then?” He sounded irritated. He tried to find something to drink but all the bottles, even the hidden ones, were empty.
“You resent Gerry because he does what you do. It’s funny. You can play God, but when he does it, it’s not allowed. Still, you can only have one person in that part at a time.”
“You’re doing what you’re about to do for the wrong reason.”
“Why shouldn’t I marry? You do it enough.”
“Not that man. You need a man with more love and more threat. He’s a deadly, manipulative bastard. All magnetic charm in public —”
“Well, it would take you to see that.”
“But fuck the world in private!” He screwed the top on a tube of white paint. As always, he was meticulous about his tools. Whatever he did to himself he could not dull his energy or ruin his looks. Was it because he never settled down? He despised safety and was always after change.
“He’s trouble undoubtedly, that man. You’ve chosen him so he can do your living for you. All you’ll be in his life is an acquisition. That’s safe. Get rid of safety!”
“Why do you care?” She needed to know if he still wanted her. In the midst of all the emotional chaos, that was suddenly important.
“Because once again you’re not being yourself. You’re not giving yourself a chance to be alive. When I read that engagement notice in the Times my heart sank.”
“Since when have you read the Times?”
“I used it for a sheet on my bed.”
“Why are you so interested in what happens to me?”
For once he didn’t have an answer.
“Are you happy with your wife?”
“Very,” he said warmly.
She felt disappointed. So she still cared what he thought about her. “But I don’t see your wife here.”
“She gives me space.” He turned and smiled at her. His smile was always dazzling. It had nothing to do with what he was looking at and was radiant in the shabby room. His head, like a ragged sunflower, was the solitary thriving thing in a wasteland of modern litter. What did he absorb from these surroundings? What could he thrive on to be so exquisite? Such squalor would make other people ugly. His backgrounds always suited him, especially when they were disordered.
“I think my marriage to Gerry de Santos will be successful, too,” she said with dignity. “Different from yours. I can’t think of any reason why I’d need space from him.”
“He’ll answer all questions for you and keep you trapped in that academic life. You’ll be dead in two years. Not officially, but in every other way. You’ll get stuffy in the end. The professor’s wife answering his letters, keeping people away. Still, you always had a strong streak of county to fall back on.”
“What are you offering me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s all very well people telling me to change my life, but what right have they if they aren’t prepared to offer an alternative?”
He put his arms around her and her body, starved for love, drew him close.
