The People on Privilege Hill Page 12

  It turned out that Lizzie Fisher knew him—she’d had a spell being interested in stamps—and she introduced us and I thought, What an exalted face. He looks like a saint.

  Over the long years of our marriage he has been away from me a great deal.

  And he was to be away the night of my infidelity, which was my birthday and which he had forgotten. I could see that he was rather troubled about forgetting my birthday and he said he would buy tickets for us to go to Glyndebourne some time to make up for it. He can always get tickets. He still went away.

  For the past year or so I have allowed myself to take a tangential view of music and since my friend Lizzie Fisher had started to go to evening classes at the local school of art, and since I’d always secretly believed that I’d be rather good at sculpture, we both enrolled in the modelling class, where it turned out that I was hopeless and Lizzie—as usual—rather good. However, the teacher was kind to me. Often he came up and pushed me aside from what I was trying to do and with one flick of the knife he would turn it into something presentable. Even nice. I would gasp and he would look sideways at me and smile. He spent time with me and the others began to notice. The model in particular noticed. She was a beautiful Croatian girl, brown, hard, flat, silent and twenty. I heard soon that he’d been “seeing her” for over a year and she was wild for him. I could feel her big fierce eyes on me. But Geoffrey—the teacher—paid no attention and looked at me if anything with more affection.

  At the break in each class we’d all go to the canteen where Lizzie Fisher and I would always sit apart from the others, being older than them. After the first term Lizzie Fisher gave up because she was bored. She’d found she was good at modelling the human figure and so began to look for something else. She’d been like this ever since we’d met at college long ago.

  But I kept on going and I took my coffee break by myself. The day I discovered that Ambrose had forgotten my birthday and was off to Bayreuth I sat as far away from the others as possible and stirred my coffee and thought that it was years—years and years—since Ambrose had even touched me, let alone looked at my body, or made love to me. He had never been very keen on it, even at the beginning. He got through it as fast as he could, but in an abstracted way as if he was listening for distant music and could only spare a very short time.

  Geoffrey came over to my table that evening and sat with me, and I looked up and saw the model drinking her mug of coffee in her silk kimono and bare feet, standing with the students all around her, all of them aware that she was naked under the kimono. Geoffrey sat with his back to them all and looked only at me. And she knew it.

  And knew it when he put his long fingers over mine.

  Towards the end of the term, just before my birthday, he put his hand over mine again and said, “Sleep with me.”

  “There’s a hotel in the Lake District,” he said.

  “The Lake District? But it’s nearly Scotland!”

  “I have to go to Edinburgh. I can drive back through the Lake District. You can drive north from here. For the Friday night. The next morning I’m flying from Manchester to the Paris Exhibition.”

  “Of course I can’t—”

  “Then what chance is there for us?” he said. “Ever. ... This is a God-sent chance.”

  I didn’t think that a hundred-mile journey to the Lake District to an unknown hotel was a God-sent chance. What if he didn’t turn up? I’d have to ask Lizzie Fisher what to do.

  But then I thought that this was my own life. It was time I stopped depending on Lizzie Fisher. This was new. It was newer and truer than my marriage thirty years ago, the predictable marriage of such a nice girl to such a kind and distinguished man. “Brilliant! Quite brilliant! And so well off. So respected in the Sacred Music world, and in Stamps. She’s very lucky.”

  I felt odd when Ambrose left for Bayreuth on the Friday morning. He would be away for a week. He was silent and seemed a little dazed. He gave me a peck and patted the dog’s head, but he didn’t ask what I was doing over my birthday. I suppose he thought I’d go out with Lizzie Fisher. She’s the nearest I’ve got to family. The previous evening I had packed for him while he was in the garden. He meditates every evening for a quarter of an hour, the dog pacing behind him. I watched them coming slowly, slowly up the steps through the water gardens, Ambrose’s head bowed, and I thought, He’s getting old. How can I?

  But I did. As soon as the taxi had driven off I was upstairs and putting things into a suitcase for myself. My car was full of petrol. I turned off the hot water and left lights arranged to come on when it got dark. I checked all the window catches and pressed the answerphone button on the telephone. Only one night.

  Then I thought, But suppose he decides to surprise me? To come back? Or have flowers delivered for my birthday tomorrow?

  So I wrote a note, just in case, and propped it on the hall table. Gone away with Lizzie Fisher.

  I thought of telling Lizzie Fisher everything, but I couldn’t. I tried to leave a message on her answerphone but it wasn’t switched on so I wrote another, very unnoticeable, note and left it on the front doorstep with a pebble on it, saying, Please leave any parcels in the greenhouse.

  Then I suddenly saw the dog, lying at the foot of the stairs.

  It is unbelievable that I had forgotten the dog, but it is true. He is Ambrose’s dog and called Ludwig, and looks ridiculously like Ambrose. I feed, walk, brush and deflea Ludwig, but he loves only Ambrose. He was watching me intently, a huge-headed shining black labrador, now of a certain age.

  I’d have to take him with me. Hatred at my heart, I shoved him into the car.

  And drove off.

  It was the unbearable M6, all round Birmingham. There is an effective route that cuts out Birmingham on the way to the Lake District. I am not sure of it, but I did my best, the lorries bearing down on me like leviathans seeking whom they might devour. I did not care, though Ludwig seemed restless. It was Friday afternoon and the weekend world was racing towards its breakneck break.

  I reached the Lake District safely and drove between the purple mountains and the crowds taking photographs beside the silver waters. The hotel stood on its own upon a green hillside. What was I doing? The dog lay asleep in the back with its four black legs in the air.

  And of course Geoffrey wasn’t there.

  I waited a while, in the car park. Then I fed Ludwig off a tin plate I’d brought with a tin of Chum, and took him for a walk up behind the hotel and gazed down at the ridiculously beautiful backdrop of Causey Pike. What could I do tomorrow to fill the time? There was the Wordsworth Museum at Grasmere. Or Beatrix Potter.

  The evening grew cold and grey, and the lake waters slapped bad-temperedly about, so I heaved myself up—my bones are no longer the bones of a girl—and back in the car park Ludwig growled and his hair rose behind the ears and I saw a small, furtive-looking man in awful cheap clothes scurrying about near the entrance.

  So I went round the side of the hotel, shutting Ludwig in the car. I went in and sat in the lounge and read a newspaper.

  People were all around, happily chattering. There was a group of two amiable families, noisy and pleased with each other, discussing old times over tea and cakes. After a while in came the unrecognisable Geoffrey and for a second he seemed uncertain. He too looked surprised as I lowered the newspaper. “Oh! Hi!” he said. I hadn’t realised he was so short. And so common.

  But the dinner was good, and the wine, and he lost his abstracted expression and in the lounge drinking brandies—the two families now decidedly rowdy and all still knocking back the tea—he put his hand over mine once more and said, “Shall we go up?”

  I said, “I must see to the dog.”

  He said, “The dog?”

  “Must take him for his walk around.”

  “Dog?”

  “Yes. He’s in the car. Ludwig.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I’ll not take long,” and I ran to the car and let Ludwig sniff around and
patted him, but when I tried to put him back he began to howl and he wouldn’t stop. He leapt about the car over the seats howling for Ambrose like some singer at Bayreuth. I had to take him into the hotel and he dominated the entrance hall.

  “He won’t settle in the car.”

  “Well, they won’t let him in the bedrooms,” said Geoffrey.

  “Oh, of course we will,” said the concierge. “Would he like a blanket?”

  “He usually sleeps on a bit of blanket,” I said. “At home.”

  Geoffrey was examining the watercolours on the walls.

  “Well, we do have a bit of blanket,” said the concierge and we trooped up to bed.

  Ludwig took a long time settling his blanket to his satisfaction. Then he scuffled about and snorted and farted and yawned. Finally he slept or seemed to sleep, but he whimpered in his dreams.

  At last he was quiet, and Geoffrey got down to what we had come for and I thought, Oh yes! Yes! I remember! Oh, I love this! Oh Geoffrey! and Geoffrey made similar loud observations, and Ludwig awoke in consternation and leapt on the bed. He is a large and heavy dog, and Geoffrey I’d not realised is very slight. There was a tussle.

  “Put the bloody thing in the bathroom,” said Geoffrey and I did, turning off the bathroom light and saying soothing things to Ludwig. I didn’t feel anything against him. I almost felt love. I hadn’t considered he might ever feel protective towards me.

  Geoffrey fell asleep at once and, much later, I fell asleep too and then of course I woke. I am no longer twenty years old and I do sometimes have to get up in the night. I crept out of bed, opened the bathroom door, felt for the string to turn the light on, fell over the dog, and my feet flew from under me and one of them hit the further wall, only inches away, wham!

  I heard the snap. My foot was gone. It hung down like a leaf. Ludwig, his protective instincts exhausted, padded from the bathroom and back to his blanket.

  I knew it was broken.

  At first I felt no pain at all but when I leaned forward to touch it there were vibrations everywhere like silent aeolian strings. They trembled up and down, back and front, over the toes, up each side of the leg and up the back of the shin. It wasn’t a “twisted ankle.” It wasn’t what in the Girl Guides we had called a “sprain” and had learned to treat. This ankle was broken. Smash, snap!

  I crawled into the bedroom and heaved myself on to the bed, and Geoffrey lay there deeply sleeping. But something woke him and he turned his head and opened his eyes and he looked at me, mystified. He’d had a lot of wine.

  I said, “Geoffrey. I think I’ve broken my ankle,” and he said “Oh, no!” and sank to sleep again.

  Beside the bedside telephone there was a number to ring the front desk; but nobody answered. I tried again and got a metallic voice telling me that there was nobody there until 6:30 a.m. but in an emergency to ring ... And he babbled out a number so fast that I couldn’t hear it though I tried three times. I think then that I passed out.

  I woke to Geoffrey’s packing (Ludwig was deep asleep) and it was seven o’clock and he was off to Manchester airport. He kissed my cheek. I said, “So sorry, Geoffrey. I’m afraid I broke my ankle,” and he said, “Oh, no!”

  I said, “Don’t go to Paris.”

  He said, “Paris? I’m not going to Paris. I’m going to Zagreb.”

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, “and so innocent. I’ll tell them at the desk,” and he was gone.

  In time I got help. They were excellent and so apologetic about the emergency number.

  They were sending for an ambulance and I would be well looked after. The Lake District was the perfect place to break an ankle. The mountain rescue were on twenty-four-hour call. The nearest hospital was thirty-five miles away at Carlisle, but it was first class. They would telephone anyone I wanted. Had I children?

  No, I had no children. And there was the dog.

  “Ah—the dog.”

  “Your—partner—settled the bill last night. He thought this morning that you might have a friend—?”

  I knew that I did not want Lizzie Fisher to know. And what purpose to ring Ambrose in Bayreuth? I took a deep breath and said, “D’you know, my car’s an automatic. This is my left foot. I believe I can drive myself home.”

  “It is out of the question,” they said, but I saw what a relief it would be for them if I simply disappeared.

  “Could you get me a wheelchair to the car and someone to help me wash and dress—and put the dog in?”

  “We could, but we’d be most—”

  “Oh, please.”

  Someone came and helped me into the bathroom, where I closed my eyes.

  And they lifted me into the car, put Ludwig in behind me, where he rested his smelly black jaw on my shoulder. They brought me a thermos of coffee. From the pretty Swiss gables of the hotel faces peered, the two indefatigable families venturing a distant interest. The mountains brooded on.

  Now, the driver of a car is usually two people (or a single schizophrenic). One of them is terrified, watchful of every other vehicle as a potential enemy; every other driver is about to swerve, overtake, fall asleep, attack and destroy. The other self is confident, skilled and in charge, and this second covert creature comes to the fore in time of trial. My useless left foot flapped against the hump that occurs down the middle of cars but my right foot behaved like Schumacher’s on his best of days. I roared from the Lake District scene, sending Ludwig backwards into a heap behind me. In twenty minutes I was on the motorway, then on the road home. “How far have you to go?” the hotel had asked. “No distance at all,” said the Schumacher self. (“And if I die, I die,” said the fallen, defeated mess of a wife.)

  Petrol?

  I stopped. I could not get out, so I hooted and eventually a fat girl came waddling.

  “I’ve hurt my foot. I can’t get out. Can you get me some petrol? I’ll have to pay with a card.”

  “If you pay by card you have to come inside to activate your pin.”

  “Can you find me the manager? I can’t activate my pin.”

  “There isn’t a manager.”

  “Then I shall call the police.”

  She said, “Just a minute,” and disappeared for ten, returning with someone holding an electronic pin machine.

  I roared on, took a wrong turning and found myself on the Birmingham ring road, which again I flew along to a chorus of wailing horns and cartoon-strip purple, yelling faces. I left at the correct exit and thundered on, cameras flashing, motorists blaring, the road vanishing beneath me and far away behind.

  I did not stop.

  I was desperate to pee, but it went off.

  I hung on.

  And I reached home.

  The house was as dead as when I had left it the previous day. The note under the pebble guarding against possible flowers had not been disturbed. I turned off the engine and began to cry.

  Then the pain began, grabbing me like a manacle. It was the devil’s grip and he was saying to me, “Ha-ha! I am here! You have sinned. You have sinned against your good, kind husband to please a rat. You are also a fool. You should have gone to hospital. You may be in plaster now for months. A wheelchair case. You may limp for the rest of your life. You are now, officially, an old woman. You have ‘had a fall.’”

  So in my weedless semicircular drive this summer morning I leaned back in my seat and wept. It was not yet eleven o’clock. I’d driven from the Lake District in two hours. Now I could not get out of the car, for a huge conflagration was raging inside my shoeless flapping foot.

  I wept on and the postman came up the drive and gave me a jaunty wave. He stopped only when Ludwig set up a howl to waken the dead. Ludwig howled and barked and battered his paws against all the windows, and the postman paused and looked in.

  He is a big man and I am small. He lifted me out and, still holding me, found the house keys in my bag and opened the door. He laid me gently on the sofa in the hall and got on to his mobile for an ambulance.
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br />   “But I am safe now,” I said. (And nobody need ever know.) I leaned over to the hall table to pull away the note I’d left saying I’d gone off with Lizzie Fisher and tore it up.

  Sounds outside indicated the ambulance and the postman came back saying he’d left the dog next door—yes, quite agreeable. “We’ll soon have you right,” he said and dropped a letter on my chest.

  Thick expensive writing paper. Posted yesterday, the envelope handwritten in Ambrose’s tense, consistent fountain-pen script. I knew at once it must have been written before he left and posted from the airport. The stamp was stuck on very straight.

  The ambulance crew were examining my ankle, gently touching while they watched my face. Someone was giving me an injection of morphine in the arm. “It doesn’t stop the pain, love, but it stops you caring about it.”

  I said, “Thank you,” and opened the letter which began, All I can do is tell you the truth without preamble. It has been over for so long, has it not? In the end I have made the decision to go away with Lizzie Fisher.

  THE LAST REUNION

  Brenda was keeping on about how she and Stafford had met for the first time at this very place, at this same time of year, and how she had never slept with any other man and how they’d both been virgins at their wedding and how now, over forty years on, they were proud of it.

  Eileen, a smouldering woman, was thinking about where Lily would park the car. There had been no instructions.

  Lily, who was driving the car, her cherry-coloured Alfa Romeo, was wondering why she was filled with heaviness: a heaviness unnatural to her, though natural enough for Eileen. It was Eileen’s almost permanent condition and ever had been. Eileen had been silent at college and silent she remained. Eileen looked like a storm. In fact, Eileen’s black brows and suspicious mouth and barrel figure reflected an even greater darkness at sixty-plus than in the student. Though for no obvious reason. Eileen’s life since graduation had been highly respected, diligent and secure. She had been a secretary somewhere at the Foreign Office, never late with a memo; and she was considered rather a splendid institution once you’d become used to the expression of suppressed fury on her face.