The Stranger Came Page 6

  'Not exactly.’

  'I'm twenty-nine. I'll be thirty on the day before Christmas. That's my present for this year.’

  Lucy was relieved. If that was all that was wrong!

  'It's a present I'd be grateful for,' she laughed. 'It's rather too long since I woke up and found thirty in my stocking.’

  'I don't want to grow old.’

  'Oh, old!' Lucy cried, half amused and entirely offended. Janet stared, absorbed and unsmiling.

  'I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning thinking about it. All those creams and the ghastly diets, you know? And exercise…Like men say, you know? Are you fit? And that's what we pretend now too – that we're getting fit. Nobody ever says fit for what.’ Involuntarily, Lucy glanced at the book on the couch; the bust spilling out of the Regency top defied nature. She could not bring herself to make the joke, but it would have been a relief if Janet had. Her tone was horribly serious. 'But it doesn't stop – you go on getting older every minute of every day – even while you're sleeping it doesn't stop. You leave an apple in the bowl and put fresh ones on top by mistake, and when you get to it it's gone black. Sometimes it looks all right – but the side you can't see is rotten . That's what's happening to us. We're rotting away.’

  Alarmed, Lucy wished she hadn't come.

  'I'm so frightened,' Janet said.

  'But Ewen doesn't see you that way. He sees you as you are. He sees you as we all see you. He sees a beautiful woman.’

  It wasn't her style to pay extravagant compliments and she believed this description to be true, though normally she would never have dreamed of saying so.

  'How can you have any idea, married to Maitland, what a man like Ewen sees? I don't know how Ewen sees me anymore. I know how he used to. When the business started, I did the books, I answered the phone. We'd sit at night and talk the day over – there wasn't anything came up we couldn't solve – it was hard going, but there was never any doubt we were going to make it. Then he didn't mind me playing up to men. Those fat old swine who hand out the contracts.’ She smiled bitterly. 'I didn't go to bed with any of them. Not that I wasn't asked. That's one way for a young ambitious businessman to get his start, did you know that? I could point them out to you – you'd be surprised at the names. Big men now – but they pimped their wives to get there. To be fair the wives they have now aren't always the ones they pimped. But I just smiled and was nice. A pretty girl – it made them feel how important they were. Anyway they weren't all fat – quite dishy sometimes. Being rich suits the outdoor type. Ewen got his contracts – so many it didn't matter whether I was there or not. He's quite successful, you know.’

  Lucy hesitated between admiration and commiseration, not sure which was being called for.

  'He doesn't talk to me about the business now, or about anything much. He's got bigger – I've got smaller. There's nothing smaller than a housewife without children.’

  'I don't feel that.’

  'What?'

  'I'm a housewife – it doesn't bother me. And I've got used to the idea we're not going to have a family. I don't feel worthless.’

  'Oh,' vaguely, '…but you're different.’ Before Lucy could decide on her reaction to that, she continued, 'You were at the Sinclair’s'?'

  'The Sinclair’s?' Lucy began, and then realising the potential for embarrassment if she took that line, went on firmly, 'Yes, we were there.’

  'When I was dancing with Frank – it didn't mean anything. Christ, he's not even my type.’

  'Oh, type.’ I've never known quite what that meant, Lucy thought.

  'I was lonely.’

  Ewen had been there; not dancing with his wife or anyone else; settled morose in a corner brooding over his drink with a concentration that discouraged interruption. And then gradually everyone in the room was conscious of Janet as she danced with Frank Pritchard, everyone except her husband. Her body swaying, giving off the need and desire of a woman neglected; unselfconscious, lost and dreamily absorbed, she danced and Lucy had seen the faces of the men sweat and change and the women too watching her with a kind of greed. Then there was an inarticulate grunting and Ewen had pulled her from the floor. Everything went quiet, and as he realised what he had done his colour changed from red to a muddy white. But she had left, parting the silence, and at the door turned and drawled, ‘Good-night all, marvellous evening.’ It had been a week before she ventured again on to the village street and the dark glasses only drew attention to the bruise around her eye.

  'It's not as if he was interested himself,' Janet said. 'That little swine Scrope said to me, “you did the women a good turn. Every wife in the village got screwed that night.”’ Lucy glanced away from her look of enquiry. 'Except yours truly.’

  While she had been indoors, the clouds had crept across, chilling the air. She pitied Janet. The grey light drained everything of colour. She wondered if Ewen was as successful as Janet believed. She had read somewhere that more marriages break up over money than sex. That seemed likely; but then it occurred to her that Janet might have done more than smile and flatter those old men with the power to put contracts Ewen's way.

  Had she let them touch her? Those old gross men?

  There was no way it seemed of controlling your thoughts.

  'Would you fetch my briefcase?' Maitland asked.

  It was the comfortable time of the evening to which she looked forward. They had brought through the percolator and the little Dutch cups – windmills 4 and 6 of the set, 'Gronzeilermolen' and 'Stellingmolen' – to finish their meal in front of the living-room fire. She had been wondering if it would be disloyal to tell Maitland about Janet, but wondering with the comfortable certainty that she would, since she told him everything.

  'You want me to get it?' The request puzzled her. 'But where is it?'

  'You didn't notice? I thought you might have. I put it down when I came into the hall.’

  'And you want me to get it?'

  'Please.’

  It crossed her mind she was being obtuse and spoiling some surprise he had for her. The briefcase was lying on the hall .table. He had a new one, but still preferred this battered old favourite in which he carried books and papers, notes for talks and documents for Department meetings. There was nothing lying beside it: she had thought of chocolates; Maitland was fond of chocolates. She hefted the weight of the case.

  'I've poured coffee,' Maitland said.

  'Lovely.’

  He took the case from her without acknowledgement, setting it on his knee and resting the delicate china cup upon it. She sipped her coffee, but the comfortable evening mood was spoiled. She waited.

  'I had a seminar this afternoon,' Maitland said. He scraped the edge of the case with a fingernail. The sound affected her nerves unpleasantly. 'A group of bright young men – and women. Bright young people. I was reflecting on the Brothers Grimm. Would you believe, by the way, that not one of them could name one of Grimms' folk­ tales, never mind having read them? "Cinderella ...?" was one offering. Thank God, we didn't sink to Donald Duck.’ And in his eager American voice, '"Was that the guy who drew Snoopy, sir?" No, we're dealing with the cream of their generation. It's just that their generation hasn't been told about how the fearless boy learned fear or about the little girl who kept sticking her arm up out of the grave until they sent for her mother who came and whacked it down with a stick. Deprived. What do you think they had instead? The castles of Auschwitz and Dachau? Heinrich Himmler as hobgoblin? The German children of Grimm.’

  'Wouldn't that be our generation?'

  'Ancient history, you mean. And what will their children have? A video of The Killing Fields as a grotesquerie for the nursery?'

  'Poor things – after all, they weren't expecting a seminar on folk-tales!' She laughed and felt better. Unlike Janet and Ewen Hayes their lives were not separate.

  'In a way that was the point. They knew all about Grimm's law – voiceless stops and voiceless fricatives and the rest of it. Folklore and phi
lology under the same hat – that's what I wanted them to think about. Those founding fathers were amateurs in a way it's not possible for any of us to be now. You get that lovely sense of the uncluttered power of the mind, pure logical intellect, which only comes from laymen busy inventing their science. Hutton in geology, Hugh Miller among his Old Red Sandstone; the assault of non-specialist reason upon the mysteries of nature.’

  This tone of the lecture-room – he had too much of a sense of humour, too much of a sense of proportion for this. Uncertainly, she returned his smile.

  'You might call it innocence. Who's been a bigger critic of the military-industrial complex than Noam Chomsky? And yet,' he reached a book down from the shelf, 'the research for Aspects of the Theory of Syntax was paid for by, let's see, "the Joint Services Electronics Programs (US Army, US Navy, and US Air Force) under Contract No. DA36-039-AMC-03200(E).” Money for science – yes, even linguistics, I say to them – came from the military, big money, in hopes of getting stuff that would be useful against "the enemy.” And Chomsky hadn't been politicised yet by Vietnam. No discredit to him. But innocence gets harder to come by all the time. And after they'd talked themselves out, I decided to finish off by reading a couple of items. You know I do that – put things in the case to use in a seminar?'

  Of course, she knew his habits. Alerted, she stared at the briefcase which he had set upright on his knee.

  'I hadn't opened it till then. The Faculty meeting with McBain was postponed. Again!'

  'Mmm.’

  'So to make an end of the seminar, I tip up the briefcase to bring out the papers. You know that trick of mine?' He drew the low table up against his knees and, suiting the action to the word, emptied the case. A book and a selection of papers slid out, and with them slithering across the polished surface perhaps a dozen contraceptive sheaths in their neat little packages.

  'That's exactly the way it happened.’ He lined them up in a tidy row. Now extra safe, she read; now extra safe. 'I couldn't think of anything to say – and I'd been talking so fluently. My bright young people, being bright, took their leave. Being young they couldn't resist letting me hear their laughter from the other side of the door.’

  'But it's disgraceful,' she said. 'How could they have dared?'

  Nothing in her vision of Maitland with his students fitted a joke like that. If, in fact, it could be described as a joke at all. It was malice, the kind of malice directed against someone who was disliked and, worse than that, despised.

  'But it's not funny, it's appalling,' she said.

  'You don't feel I was over-reacting? I mean, to a student prank. Not in very admirable taste, of course, but then you don't look to students for models of taste.’

  She was disappointed in him. It wasn't like him to look for some palatable evasion. 'I don't see how you can call it a prank!' she said.

  'I'm not disagreeing,' he said mildly. 'I just wonder why you're so sure.’

  'Those things,' her glance flicked over the neat row, 'those ridiculous things. They will make me embarrassed when we're on campus together. The idea someone might be referring to them when they see us.’

  'You think they make me ridiculous?'

  'That's not – not what I was saying –'

  'They're dirty perhaps? But not ridiculous – in their right place. A place for everything and everything in its place.’

  'I understand you must have been upset,' she said, 'but why take it out on me?'

  'I couldn't think of anyone else who would have had the chance to put them in there.’

  'You really are serious.’ She knew that she should be angrier, the innocent should be angry. 'You really believe I could do a thing like that. Something so…undignified.’ Suddenly she was in tears. 'If you don't –’ And again, 'If you –' for what she could not find words for in her distress was this horror of not being known.

  In the dark, his hand stroked her shoulder. 'You're not asleep?'

  'No.’

  He turned her gently and she felt his hand take the weight of her breast and then run lightly, tingling her skin, down her front until he trailed the tips of his fingers across her belly.

  'You hurt me so much,' she whispered, and felt him stir against her.

  'I'm sorry.’

  'I don't understand how you could think a thing like that.’

  'We'll call it a mystery. Let's not worry about it now.’ All the time his fingers brought her to life. They stroked the inner side of her thighs, went on her belly, on her thighs again, on her groin. She opened to him. His finger lifted the sensitive beak of her flesh, rubbed.

  'Come into me!'

  'Roll over.’ Still with his finger insistent on the sensitive place, he put her over face-down. She quivered knowing what was to come, and her buttocks sprang to the beating of his hand.

  'I'm punishing you for what you did,' he whispered, his breath hot against her skin.

  But, 'No!' she cried, and heaved herself away from him. How dare he! 'You said you believed me!'

  'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.’ His contrition whispered over her out of the dark. 'Sorry. Sorry. It's only our game. I wasn't talking about that – what happened. That's forgotten.’ He kissed her on the lips. 'My darling, my love.’ How could she help forgiving him? 'My love.’

  His hands moved on her, but she could not see his face.

  Later she woke and heard the deep rasp of his breathing and felt the weight of his leg across hers. At the moment of entering her, he had whispered something she hadn't made out and she'd thought, I can hardly ask him to say it again, it's not the moment, and he had gone in. She had been afraid he wouldn't, holding him to guide him in, it had seemed too big in all the years it had never seemed so large, and he was in and she thought of how he would pull back to prepare the noise of the little packet tearing and the soft grunt and fumble of him as he drew it over himself but never so large as tonight would a sheath hold it? Would it have burst in her? he was always so careful pressing out the air with his fingers so careful, the thick brute came as a stranger into the dance, forcing her, parting her, driving, driving, driving in. Until she milked the strength from it at last.

  He had collapsed with his face nestled into her and perhaps he had slept for a moment for she had felt the water from his mouth dribble on to her shoulder and then he rolled away. And startled her with a noise she did not recognise at first as laughter. 'Remember the last night we made love? I'll bet every woman at the party got it that night – except poor Janet. There's no justice.’ And laughed and yawned together.

  She eased from under him gradually, intent upon not waking him.

  In the bathroom the small mirror above the sink was not enough. She came out and into the guest bedroom where Monty Norman had slept. She drew the curtains before putting on the light. On the inner side of the wardrobe door there was a full-length mirror. She set it open and stood naked before it. On her left breast there was bruising round the nipple. She turned her breast to the light with trembling fingers. She twisted to glimpse the length of her back and buttocks. There was no mark on the white full flesh. She faced the mirror again and parting her legs saw the dark welts on her inner thighs.

  She hated the pink-tinted, complacent image of her face in the glass. What did it have to do with her horror, with her fear? She had seen these bruises last night and they had not been caused by Maitland; they had not made love for weeks and in any case he was a gentle lover who would not do that to her. She had blamed him for accusing her – yet how could anyone tell what was behind that blankness caught in a mirror, frowning now as she had seen it frown over a menu for dinner? People slept defenceless by one another – ate what the other prepared – teetered side by side on cliff edges. Her body had been marked in some dream. If trust stopped, there was no safety anywhere. Oh, she should warn him there was malice in the world, warn him to be afraid.

  Gently she touched the bruised nipple, comforting herself. She raised her head and saw Maitland's reflection. Her first instinct wa
s to turn and hold out her arms to him, but she was ashamed of her nakedness. She had not taken her hand from where it cupped her injured breast, and now saw her free hand with an agonisingly slow furtive movement creep across and cover her sex.

  The face of her husband watching seemed to her without expression, but then neither his own nor hers were flesh but only surfaces set side by side in a glass.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter 7

  Something to Tell You

  She wanted to cross the road. The car, though, had stopped in front of her and now as the woman got out a traffic warden had appeared .

  'Not here, dear. You not see the double yellow line?'

  As Lucy moved to go past, the woman swung the car door further open, blocking her way.

  'Stopping on those lines could cause an accident,' the warden said. 'They're there for a purpose, you know.’

  'Would you be quiet?' the woman said to him, and to Lucy, 'Don't go!'

  'Are you drunk?' He pushed his face into hers and sniffed like a dog on a scent. 'If you're not safe, you shouldn't be in the vehicle.’

  'I have to talk to you,' she said to Lucy.

  'I'm talking to you. Are you listening to me?'

  'Not really,' she said to him and pushed the door of the car shut. 'I'm going now and that'll let you get on with whatever you do.’

  His voice followed them, 'I'll show you what I do,' but it sounded plaintive and deflated.

  She had wanted to cross the road. Why?

  She was trying to think about this, and the woman was an interruption walking close to her, too close.

  'There's somewhere I have to go,' Lucy said. 'I'm sorry I have no time.’

  'Are you all right?' the woman asked. And Lucy recognised her. 'Are you all right?' Sophie Lindgren asked.

  'I couldn't,' she felt sick, 'make up my mind where I wanted to go. Stupid – I was dreaming.’

  'Were you going to visit the Trust?'