A Gift of Poison Read online

  ‘Oh, that’s so nice,’ she says. ‘It’s so lovely to have you touching me again.’

  He thinks of all the harm he has done her and he feels sad. None of it is her fault, that she was too much for him, that he wasn’t enough for her, that he fell in love with Helen. Perhaps it was not even his fault either. It was all an accident, and they are paying for it with their lives.

  * * *

  ‘Well, we tried and it didn’t work,’ Richard says.

  ‘Is that why you came with me?’ Inge says. ‘So you could say you’d tried and it doesn’t work?’

  ‘What did you try?’

  ‘We did the exercises, the way you said. Well, some of them. The massage. We stroked each other. God, this is embarrassing.’

  ‘I thought it was nice,’ Inge says. ‘It was lovely to be touching again.’

  ‘How often did you do them?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Not very often,’ Inge says. ‘Maybe twice a week.’

  ‘It felt very artificial,’ Richard says. ‘I told you it would.’

  ‘So you were right,’ Michael says. ‘Is that important to you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To be right?’

  ‘God, what are you trying to prove? Any fool can see that stroking you ex-wife after a ten-year separation is going to be embarrassing. Not to mention reporting on it afterwards to a perfect stranger.’

  ‘Yes, none of this is easy, is it? In fact it’s quite painful for you, isn’t it? So you’re feeling pretty angry about the exercises. Did they have any erotic effect?’

  ‘If you mean did I get a hard-on, no.’

  ‘Did you want to?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Were you hoping the exercises might give you an erection and lead to making love? Or put you in the mood for making love without an erection perhaps?’

  ‘No. I don’t feel ready for that. Anyway, you said we didn’t have to try.’

  ‘That’s right. The exercises were only meant to get you both used to each other’s bodies again. Perhaps help you start to feel more relaxed and playful.’

  ‘It would have been nice, though,’ Inge says. ‘It would have been a lovely surprise. Sometimes I thought maybe it was going to happen. I was very excited and I thought you were just a little bit excited too.’

  ‘Were you, Richard?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you try any of the other things I suggested?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well, you remember I said you might like to read some of the books on the list, or watch an erotic video together, or use fantasy, or just talk to each other about your feelings.’

  ‘No, we didn’t do any of that.’

  ‘We did talk a bit about the past,’ Inge says. ‘It was very sad. I think maybe that put us off making love.’

  ‘I think we just need more time,’ Richard says. ‘A lot more time.’

  ‘And yet you’re still here,’ Michael says. ‘You’ve both come back. You didn’t cancel, although you both sound a bit disappointed. It’s early days yet and none of us thought anything would happen very fast. So what would you like to do next? What would feel helpful? Do you want to go on with the exercises? Or is there something in the past that’s blocking you and stopping you moving on? Maybe we need to talk more about why you broke up and why you got back together.’

  Richard feels total panic. He had thought it was bad enough already, being asked intimate questions and given embarrassing tasks to perform, but far worse horrors suddenly open up in front of him. If I walk out now, he thinks, I’ll be in the wrong, but if I stay, he’ll get to Helen. I’m not having Helen brought into this.

  * * *

  He thinks grimly to himself that there is only one thing, no matter how difficult, that will get him out of the whole ghastly mess, that will shut her up and allow him to stop going to the godawful therapist, but with honour, not as an admission of defeat. And that is what he will somehow have to do.

  * * *

  He must try to accommodate her. With a morning erection sometimes, a brief coupling when they are both half asleep and he can pretend it’s not really happening, or stay lost in a dream of Helen. At night after drinking a lot but not too much. In the dark or with his eyes shut, so he doesn’t have to see her eager, loving face; or from behind, so he doesn’t have to kiss her and it’s easier to pretend she’s someone else. Sometimes with a violent fantasy of Felix, of trying to kill him, not just with a blow but close in, hands round his throat, choking him to death. Or thinking of Felix with Sally. Pictures of Felix and Sally together, uncensored. The sicker the fantasy, he finds, the harder he gets. It still isn’t very hard but it’s enough. Honour is satisfied and Inge is happy. He hears the words he dreads, over and over again. ‘Oh Richard, I love you so much,’ followed by the ultimate self-sacrificing gift: ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to say it.’

  And he doesn’t say it. He can’t. He’s already done all he can by coming inside her. Not well, not often, and not for long, but he’s done it. That’s his gift to her. It’s all he can manage and more than he wants to give. He feels relief that the long struggle is over but also disgust that he has the sort of marriage where only ugly fantasies can excite him. The therapist has told him that this is all right, even normal, it seems, whatever that means, but Richard still doesn’t like it. He wants to be excited by love.

  * * *

  ‘It’s all right,’ Inge says. ‘I don’t know how to tell you. I’m so happy. It’s all right. We – we’re actually making love again.’

  ‘Ah,’ Michael says. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘It’s embarrassing, it feels very private. But I had to come and tell you. It’s all right. I’m so grateful. We needn’t come and see you any more. I can’t believe it but it’s all right.’

  ‘Well, that’s splendid. I’m very pleased.’

  ‘Thank you for helping us.’

  ‘You helped yourselves.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to say now. I feel so silly being here. I don’t have a problem any more. I should have cancelled and written you a letter. I’m using a space that someone else needed.’

  ‘And that’s all right.’

  ‘I just feel so happy, I wanted to tell you in person.’

  ‘It’s really nice to hear good news.’

  ‘Well, you can cancel our other appointments and give them to other people now.’

  ‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘Unless you’d like to go on coming by yourself for a while. Would that be helpful?’

  ‘Yes.’ She’s surprised. ‘Could I do that? I know how busy you are.’

  ‘Well, you might like a bit more time to sort out your feelings. These are big changes happening very suddenly. You might like a little support while you go through them.’

  Afterwards, walking home, she wonders why she was so eager to accept, why she didn’t just say no, I don’t need that. But something about the offer seemed reassuring, like a safety net. Richard need never know, she tells herself.

  * * *

  After a while Helen starts to get used to the pain. It feels familiar, almost comforting, like a child’s rag doll or piece of luggage, giving her a sense of security. Tentatively she begins trying to direct the pain into her work, use it as if it were an actual implement. She isn’t quite sure how to do this, but she does it nevertheless. She is surprised by the extra dimension it gives her, this new sharp etching tool inside her. She experiments with technique, colour, texture, shape: she feels freer, she now realises, than she has for years, like a student again. She even dares to be excited by the change of her work. If she can be a different kind of painter, perhaps she can be a different kind of woman. Locked into a marriage that was ailing more than she knew, perhaps her work was landlocked too, without her realising it. She takes to arriving earlier and earlier at the studio, sometimes sleeping there as in the old days when Sally was a child and they were alone together. She feels a little crazy in her isol
ation but the knowledge that she is working again comforts her.

  It is autumn. Perhaps that too gives her renewed energy, the cooler weather, the supportive structure of the new term at college. She has to accept that she can’t control Sally, who will see Felix if she wants to. Sally can’t be protected indefinitely. She is a grown woman now and entitled to ruin her life in her own way, just like Helen. Felix may not even be the worst thing that can happen to Sally, incredible as that seems: she may be doing drugs at college or sleeping around and catching HIV or getting herself raped and murdered by an intruder: any nightmare that Helen cares to imagine. It’s a hard fact to swallow, the hardest fact of parenthood, that you cannot save your own child from pain or death, not even by laying down your life. The anxiety she feels about Sally, which could turn into an obsession if she let it (another pregnancy would be the end of the world, she thinks) can be transmuted into anger. Anger is safer. Anger mobilises her. And anger with Sally leads her to anger with Richard. Perhaps finally it is the anger that saves her, not the autumn energy or the experimental work. Pure distilled rage sets her free.

  * * *

  Magdalen phones while she is safely in this mood, not on one of the evenings when she still has a relapse, goes home and cries and gets drunk. Magdalen, who has never been married, has left her alone through the summer, announcing, ‘I’m going to give you time to get over it,’ as if this can be precisely measured. Perhaps Magdalen is right. Helen isn’t sure of anything any more.

  ‘Helen, I want you to come out with me next week,’ Magdalen says abruptly. ‘It will do you good. You’ve been mouldering away far too long.’

  Helen opens her mouth to say something sharp and resentful: she loathes having good done to her, especially by Magdalen, who should know this by now. It’s an uneasy relationship at best between painter and dealer, a mixture of friendship and necessity and financial bitterness, but she has been too long with Magdalen to change now: it would be like another divorce and she lacks the energy for it. Besides, she knows Magdalen believes in her work and that is all that really matters.

  Just before she has time to be rude Magdalen says, ‘Jordan Griffiths is back from New York and he’s having a retrospective. I think he’s grossly overrated but I know you like his work.’

  Helen hesitates. She hasn’t seen Jordan for fifteen years and he was the only person who meant anything to her after Carey and before Richard, though Magdalen can’t know that. It would be fun to see him again and he is still one of the few painters whose work she respects. It seems ages since she has had any fun.

  ‘How is he these days?’ she says. Magdalen usually knows any gossip there is.

  ‘Well, he’s getting ridiculous prices, as even you in your ivory tower must realise.’

  ‘You know I don’t read the papers any more,’ Helen says. It seems an inadequate summary of her life over the past few months, with everything fined down to mere survival: work and sleep, rage and tears. Learning to be alone. Waiting for something to happen. She has been inside as truly as if she were in jail, locked up in herself. She hasn’t let in any extraneous information because there didn’t seem to be any room for it in her head.

  ‘Well, if you lived in the real world you’d know he’s hit the jackpot in the States.’

  ‘That’s not the real world,’ she says, defending herself. ‘That’s the art world.’ Besides, what she meant was, How is he in himself?

  ‘Well, you’re part of it, like it or not, and it wouldn’t hurt you to turn up occasionally, see what’s going on.’

  Now she would like to refuse because she responds badly to bullying. But she wants to see Jordan again, now that Magdalen has planted the idea, although she had not thought of him for years. Magdalen has been very clever.

  ‘Well, of course I know he’s successful,’ she says. ‘I just didn’t realise he’s filthy rich. I’m glad. He deserves it.’

  ‘His wife died of cancer last year,’ Magdalen says. ‘I think that’s taken the shine off things a bit.’

  * * *

  The gallery is crowded and noisy and Helen sees lots of people she knows. But she can’t concentrate on any of them. Her eyes are searching for Jordan even while she is looking at his paintings, vast slabs of interrelated colours and shapes which dominate the space. Jordan has never lost his allegiance to Hans Hofmann while developing his own style. She would like to come back and look at them quietly with no one else there. It would be a rare pleasure to examine Jordan’s progress over the past thirty years.

  Memories of the affair come back to her as she stands in front of each painting. It hadn’t lasted long, six months perhaps, because he was still married to his second wife at the time and Helen was still mourning the loss of Carey. She had thought Jordan was unreliable, even a rogue, and she was trying to cure herself of rogues. He had seemed like Carey, only much more talented, and she had said goodbye to him because she didn’t want a messy life any more. Then a year later she heard he had divorced and gone to live in New York where he remarried. The news had hurt her more than she expected.

  Now she finally sees him at the end of the room, talking to people, and she walks towards him. He is standing near a large charcoal drawing of an emaciated woman, hollow-eyed and almost bald, lying in bed propped up on pillows. She is smiling slightly but she looks very close to death. It is the only representational picture in the show, the only portrait, the only charcoal drawing, the only black and white and grey object amongst all the colour and he is standing beside it as if they were a couple. Helen shivers; she feels a real shock. She notices that although people cluster round him they avoid this picture and there remains an empty space in front of it like a charmed circle that no one will enter.

  As she approaches him she realises that the attraction she once felt so strongly is still there. She is amazed: she had imagined herself to be sexually dead after all that has happened. She had thought that if Richard never came back she would put all her energy into her work for the rest of her life, but now she is near to Jordan she is looking at him with actual desire.

  It’s not that he has improved with age, as some men do. In fact he is falling apart. He has put on a lot of weight, so that he needs all his height to carry it, and his hair has turned grey and quite a lot of it has fallen out. He also has the look of a man who has gone through a great ordeal and only just managed to survive. There are lines of endurance around his mouth and deep puffy shadows under his eyes. People would say he has gone to seed. She thinks he looks wonderful.

  He sees her then and comes across to her, saying, ‘Helen,’ as if they had met recently. He sounds pleased to see her but not surprised.

  She says, ‘Hullo, Jordan.’ She remembers that they had never talked very much, just spent a lot of time looking at each other’s work and a lot of time in bed. She wonders if he remembers that too. She sees Magdalen watching them curiously from across the room and she wishes they were not meeting in such a public place as the gallery. But without Magdalen’s intervention they would not be meeting at all.

  She says, looking round at the paintings, ‘All this is pretty impressive,’ a vast understatement, but he would understand.

  He smiles and says, ‘Not bad. Not bad for an old man.’ The residue of Welsh that she remembers in his voice is overlaid with American now.

  She makes a quick calculation. He must be fifty-five. ‘I’d say you were in your prime.’ Then she hesitates. ‘Jordan – I’m so sorry about Hannah.’ Somehow it seems important to go in bravely at once rather than wait for a suitable moment that may never come. It had been one of those legendary marriages, his last and his happiest; they had been a much photographed, much interviewed couple at one time, so that it was impossible for her not to know they were happy. She remembers envying them.

  His face clouds over, closes down. ‘Yes, it was bad.’

  ‘I didn’t know, till Magdalen told me. I’d have written.’

  ‘It’s a bad way to go,’ he says, almost thoughtfu
lly. ‘That’s why I decided to hang the portrait. I thought she’d like to be here. But I can see it freaks people out. I did a whole series actually, towards the end.’

  She thinks this is the most intimate conversation they have ever had, and it is fifteen years since they met. Perhaps he thinks so too, for there is sudden silence between them.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’d better go back to the fray, I suppose. Let’s keep in touch, Helen. I’d like to hear your news. I hope it’s better than mine.’

  ‘Not much,’ Helen says. They exchange cards.

  * * *

  ‘He’s on the skids, if you ask me,’ Magdalen says as they leave the show. ‘I never liked his work as much as you did, but even you must agree he’s painting too much. The latest stuff is like self parody, it’ll never sell. Well, maybe it will in the States but he can’t get away with it here.’

  Helen is silent. She doesn’t want to be disloyal to Jordan but in fact the same thought had occurred to her when she walked round the gallery a second time after her conversation with him.

  ‘Don’t you agree?’ Magdalen says.

  ‘Maybe the last two or three paintings. I’m not sure. I’d like to go back when it’s quiet, I can’t evaluate it properly with everyone there.’

  ‘I can,’ Magdalen says. ‘And so can you, you’re just being diplomatic. Why, is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘Oh, we knew each other slightly fifteen years ago,’ Helen says casually. ‘He had a studio near mine when he was married to Laura.’

  ‘I gather she never forgave him for running off with Hannah Levinson,’ Magdalen says. ‘Well, she’s got the last laugh now. I suppose he’s been overworking to pay all the medical bills. It must cost a fortune to die of cancer in New York even if you’re insured.’