A Gift of Poison Read online

  But underneath all this enforced peace is a very special tension. She is waiting for something: a gesture from Richard. A phone call, a visit? She hasn’t sent him a card, although in a way she does wish him well; she simply couldn’t bring herself to write Inge’s address. That’s another problem with Christmas: it forces you to make decisions about situations that could otherwise be quietly left to drift. He has sent her a card, though, with the word love on it as well as his name. This card made her very angry. She wonders what the word love can possibly mean in the context of their separate lives: obviously not what it means to her. She has spent some time staring at it and imagining his hand on the paper writing it, then sealing the envelope and posting it secretly at work so as not to annoy Inge. He has turned Helen into a mistress again, but a celibate one, the worst of all possible worlds, she thinks. They have gone back ten years and put everything into reverse. It gives her, if no longer acute pain, a very strange feeling of unreality. She pictures Inge gloating over her Christmas triumph: her reunited family, her tree, her decorations, her table loaded with heavy German food. Perhaps, to complete the reversal, Richard will eventually make an excuse to Inge and creep out to visit Helen on Boxing Day. Is that what she is waiting for? She feels if he doesn’t make some gesture beyond the meaningless word love on a card, then all is finally lost, and she despises herself for still nourishing even the smallest hope.

  Jordan on the other hand has not sent her a card. That is no surprise; he was never the sort of person who did, even during their brief affair. Much too busy and careless of other people’s feelings, she tells herself, slamming rubbish savagely into a black refuse bag. She is almost sorry she went to his show: it stirred up memories of the past that were safer buried. She met Jordan first when she had just left Carey; to meet him again when Richard has just left her seems an odd parallel, unlucky. She doesn’t want to be reminded of the vulnerable person she once was and may be again. How many times must she put her life in order only to have it destroyed? She takes a break from sorting rubbish and sits in the old armchair, staring at her unfinished work. She suddenly feels very tired.

  When the phone rings she is sure it is Richard. She makes herself wait until it has rung several times before she answers it. And Jordan says, ‘Helen? You’re very industrious.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘hullo, Jordan, yes I am.’ Her heart is beating very fast with surprise and excitement. Was this what she was waiting for, and not Richard at all? Was this what the recent upsurge of masturbation has been about? Surely not? Wouldn’t she have told herself? How could she be so deceptive?

  ‘I rang you at home,’ Jordan says, ‘and your daughter said you were here.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Helen says. ‘She’s roasting a duck.’ Already the conversation sounds quite mad to her: she is saying the first thing that comes into her head. There is very little of her brain available to compose sentences because most of it is fully occupied reacting to the enormity of a Christmas Day phone call from Jordan. It’s rather similar to being drunk. Only a fraction of her is functioning properly, like skeleton staff on a Bank Holiday. ‘She’s doing the whole Christmas thing this year,’ she says. ‘Letting me off the hook.’ She wonders if she sounds cheerful and casual enough.

  ‘Isn’t it nice,’ Jordan says, ‘when they’re big enough to do that? I’ve got my entire brood here waiting on me.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ she says, feeling she needs an interpreter to tell her if she is making sense. The words come out at random from some emergency store; they could mean anything.

  ‘Plus some of their lovers and children,’ Jordan adds. ‘It’s quite crowded.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I imagine it must be.’

  Then there is a quite awkward pause. Clearly neither of them knows what to say. Perhaps he is as shell-shocked as she is, she thinks, but as he made the call, at least he had advance warning. Seconds pass that feel like minutes. She can hear him breathing and that seems very intimate. She wants to be back in bed with him fifteen years ago. She wants to hold his large heavy body again; she wants him to go down on her and let her come several times till it hurts and she has to stop; she wants to have his cock in her mouth and then inside her for a long time; she wants to hear him cry out when he comes; she wants to lie there in his arms and fall asleep. She suddenly wants all that very much. It would make her feel human again. She remembers that they always had trouble making conversation but no trouble at all making love.

  ‘So I just thought I’d ring you,’ he says finally, ‘and wish you a happy Christmas.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’ And why didn’t you ask me out, Jordan? she screams inside. How about an old-fashioned date? Dinner even? Or just sex. I’m not proud. Something. Anything. Or what is the point of ringing me? Is this phone call and five minutes’ chat at your show all we’re going to have in this second incarnation?

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we must get together some time.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, heart leaping with hope, and then with a burst of courage: ‘Let’s make it soon.’

  Another aching pause and then he says, ‘I’m glad you came to the show.’ He sounds heavy and remote now, as if he wants to get off the phone. She wonders what time of year Hannah died. Is Christmas a bad time for him, full of memories? Perhaps he needs more encouragement.

  ‘It was very impressive,’ she says. And it was also three months ago. God, Jordan, she thinks, you know I like your work but right now it’s your body I want. How can two grown-up people, old friends, ex-lovers, be so inept at getting together? I don’t want to have to invite you; I’d feel so much better if you asked me. She opens her mouth to say, ‘Why don’t you come round for a drink tomorrow?’ That sounds normal and friendly, not pushy and desperate. Doesn’t it? She hopes she won’t add something ludicrous about mince pies or seeing how much Sally has grown. She can’t be sure what the emergency switchboard in her brain may throw in.

  Instead she hears him say, ‘Well, have a good Christmas. I’ll ring you,’ and he actually hangs up. She can’t believe it. How could she have been so slow and stupid as to miss her chance? And what is the point of his ringing her to say he’ll ring her? She wants to kill him. Instead she laughs at the farcical misery of it all.

  When she gets home for the much publicised duck Sally says hopefully, ‘A man rang for you,’ and Helen imagines her thinking, Someone to get you off my back perhaps? ‘I told him you were at the studio. Was that all right?’

  * * *

  Sally is dressed all in black, enlivened only by a pair of diamanté earrings. She looks pale and sulky, but robust. Felix thinks her hair is just about back to a romantic length now, nine months after she had it cut, but when he tells her it looks wonderful she says, ‘You never liked it short, did you?’ and he knows it is not going to be a good day.

  For Christmas he has given her a black and red Hermès scarf, which she has draped round her neck during lunch, with exclamations of delight, making him anxious that bits of it would fall in the food. She has given him a cassette of Mozart’s Requiem to play in the car, and he wonders if this was carelessly chosen or if it is in some way prophetic. He feels uneasy as he watches her eat. Her appetite is impressive as ever, but it is not directed at him. Perversely he wants her more, as he watches her, whereas when she arrived and they greeted each other with their usual hugs and kisses, he had hardly wanted her at all.

  ‘God, I hate Christmas,’ she says. ‘Mum’s in a foul mood and she went to the studio yesterday same as usual and left me to do lunch. Some man rang up for her while she was out. I wonder if she’s got a lover. I hope to God she has, it might cheer her up a bit.’

  Felix is excited by the idea of Helen with a lover. Sometimes when he is making love to Sally he pretends she is Helen, always with good results. He has noticed that he needs fantasy more and more often these days and he wonders if Sally does too or if it’s his age.

  ‘I booked a room for us,’ he says. The hotel restaurant is full of flus
hed and bloated Boxing Day guests and he is looking forward to lying naked and peaceful beside Sally in the afternoon twilight.

  She looks at him very directly. ‘Sorry, Felix, I don’t feel like sex today. Maybe they’ll give you a refund.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point,’ he says irritably.

  She shrugs. ‘Oh well, sorry.’

  ‘We could just lie down in it. Have a cuddle. Ruffle the sheets and see what happens.’ Surely he isn’t pleading with her? He watches the winter light from the window fall on her face, contrasting it with the pink-shaded hotel lamps. He can see the person she was and the person she is now, both confusingly present at the same time. He thinks of the girl in his book. She is still so young and yet the bloom has gone. Is that his fault? ‘Come on, darling,’ he says, smiling. ‘I’m sure we could find something to do.’

  ‘Don’t keep on about it,’ she says. ‘I don’t like hotel rooms any more.’

  ‘Then why did you let me book one?’ Now he wants her more than ever. It is several weeks since they have made love and the smell of her has got to him.

  ‘How was I to know how I’d feel? I’m in a funny mood. I hate Christmas. I’d sooner go for a walk by the river.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘It’s not really cold.’

  ‘It’s bloody freezing.’

  She pushes away her coffee cup. ‘Well, you needn’t come. I can go by myself.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ he says pleasantly, making the best of it. ‘Of course I’ll come. Do me good. I don’t get enough exercise.’ He puts his hand over hers on the table. ‘Just tell me what’s the matter?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing. Bloody Christmas. Mum’s getting on my nerves, she’s so depressed, and I’m fed up with looking after her. And I’ve got to go to my father for New Year, imagine seeing it in and knowing all those children are going to wake up at dawn.’

  Suddenly, shocking himself, he desperately wants it to be the way it was. ‘Come back to the flat,’ he says. ‘It’s warmer than the river and much nicer than a hotel room. We can relax there.’

  ‘I don’t like your flat any more,’ she says. ‘I told you that back in the summer. It’s full of horrible memories.’

  ‘It might not be,’ he says. ‘You haven’t been there for a very long time.’

  ‘It reminds me of you telling me to have an abortion and Richard trying to kill you. I’d rather see you at college, in my room.’

  ‘Sally,’ he says gently, ‘darling, you’re going to have to put all that behind you sooner or later.’

  ‘So you keep telling me. I don’t know how you can work there.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t have much choice.’

  ‘You do, you could sell it and buy somewhere else.’

  Defeated, he signals the waiter and pays the surprisingly large bill.

  ‘How’s the book going, anyway?’ she asks in a more conciliatory tone.

  ‘Final edit. Anther week with luck.’

  ‘Well done. When can I read it?’

  ‘Soon.’ Always a tricky moment, that. He wonders how much she will identify. Will she be flattered or furious? Will she even see how much of it is fiction and not really about her at all?

  They get up and go out. He puts his arm round her and they end up walking by the river after all in the grey afternoon light. He is afraid that although neither of them has used the word, they may have actually been saying goodbye.

  * * *

  When the doorbell rings on Boxing Day, Helen is sure it must be Richard. Who else would just turn up without warning? She is conscious of looking her worst as she goes to answer the door, having spent the morning viciously cleaning the house. She couldn’t face the studio again so soon after her abortive phone call from Jordan. Part of her is hoping that later in the day she may ring him with the casual invitation she should have issued yesterday, and part of her knows she won’t. These two parts are warring uncomfortably inside her. She wonders if this fantasy about Jordan will make her look at Richard with new eyes.

  But it’s Elizabeth on her doorstep, Elizabeth armed with a huge unwelcomed poinsettia as a passport to Helen’s house. ‘Surprise,’ she says forlornly, looking unsure of her welcome as well she might after such a long silence and all the phone calls unreturned. ‘I just thought… well, you know, season of goodwill and all that.’ Her smile looks nervous and false.

  Helen accepts the plant but feels as if Elizabeth has served a summons on her. Is she not entitled to say thank you and close the door? She did exactly that once during the summer when Elizabeth arrived with flowers. But now, of course, it’s Christmas.

  ‘Come in,’ she says grudgingly. ‘Have a drink.’

  Elizabeth takes off her coat and settles into an armchair much too fast. She looks set for a long stay, Helen thinks; she has lost weight and is actually looking rather better than she sounds, smartly dressed and carefully made up, more like someone going for an interview than visiting an old friend. ‘Where’s Sally?’ she asks, as Helen pours two glasses of wine.

  ‘Out,’ Helen says. She thinks she detects relief in Elizabeth’s body language: her shoulders look more relaxed somehow. Sudden panic sweeps over Helen. Surely they are not going to have the confrontation they have managed to avoid so far, not now, so long after the event? She feels totally trapped in her own home and that, on top of the disappointment over Richard and Jordan, makes her very angry.

  ‘I know I should have phoned,’ Elizabeth says, and Helen, abandoning all pretence of manners, says, ‘Yes, you should.’

  ‘But I thought you might make an excuse and I was right.’ Again the placating smile.

  ‘Well, I’m very fragile these days,’ Helen says defensively. ‘I can really only cope with working and living. I don’t have any energy left over for people, I’m afraid. Sorry, Elizabeth, it’s nothing personal. I just feel wiped out and I’ve nothing in reserve.’

  Already she is shocked to hear herself talking so much. Does she need Elizabeth as a friend after all or is she so desperate that she will talk to anyone who can force their way into her home? No wonder Jordan isn’t asking me out if I’m giving off distress signals like that, she thinks.

  ‘And a lot has happened between us, hasn’t it?’ Elizabeth says. ‘I’m not surprised you don’t want to see me. But I kept thinking… this time last year we were all together and I couldn’t bear not to see you. I thought if I left it long enough and then just turned up it might be all right.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now,’ Helen says ungraciously. She finds so much honesty embarrassing. And she still feels an underlying threat.

  ‘I would like us to be friends,’ Elizabeth says, as if it’s unlikely, ‘but even if we can’t be, there’s something I have to ask you. I should have asked you before but I didn’t have the courage. It’s about Sally and Felix.’ She pauses. ‘They did have an affair, didn’t they?’

  Silence in Helen’s living-room as Elizabeth waits for an answer.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be asking Felix that?’ Helen says, poker-faced.

  ‘Yes, but he’ll lie,’ Elizabeth says simply.

  ‘God, Elizabeth, I resent this,’ Helen says.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, but I need the truth. I thought I didn’t but I do. Please tell me the truth. I can’t bear to live like this any more, with everyone protecting me and deceiving me and treating me like a stupid child. I do know really, it’s the only possible thing, I mean that’s why Richard hit him, isn’t it? I’ve tried believing everything else and I can’t manage it any longer.’ And then, to Helen’s horror, she starts to cry. Now I’ve got to be sorry for her, Helen thinks furiously. She pours two more drinks; she feels she and Elizabeth are going through wartime or enduring a siege, so that it hardly matters if they are enemies or friends. The legendary spirit of the blitz had taken over as they crouch behind sandbags sharing their rations, two people in trouble. God, if I were a man, she thinks, how I should hate women’s tears.<
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  She doesn’t bother to find Kleenex for Elizabeth. She watches her grope in her bag for a handkerchief. Elizabeth looks as if she is luxuriating in her grief, as if she has come here specially to have it in Helen’s living-room.

  ‘Yes, they did have an affair,’ she says. ‘Satisfied?’

  Elizabeth makes a sort of wailing sob and blows her nose. ‘But that doesn’t explain why Richard left you,’ she says with extraordinary persistence. ‘There’s something else, I know there is. It’s even worse, isn’t it?’

  Helen is feeling quite sick now, as if she has no privacy left, as if Elizabeth is trying to drag out pieces of her inside. Perhaps it is her own abortion fifteen years ago that she is remembering and not Sally’s at all, but she very much doesn’t want to use the word. She feels angry and violated. She suddenly understands why Felix treats Elizabeth badly, although this is not the moment she would choose to see Felix’s point of view about anything. She would like to treat Elizabeth badly herself. Elizabeth seems to bring out the worst in her. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘since you’re so keen to know, Sally got pregnant and I made her get rid of it without telling Richard. When he found out he wouldn’t forgive me. Is that enough for you?’

  Elizabeth, quite calm now, puts away her handkerchief. ‘Oh Helen,’ she says, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She sounds like a mother apologising for her badly behaved child, Helen thinks, as if Felix is a toddler who has run amok and damaged the furniture. But perhaps to be fair she is in a mood to find anything Elizabeth says offensive. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Well,’ Helen says briskly, ‘there we are. But you must have known. What else could it be?’

  Elizabeth shakes her head. ‘I tried so hard not to see it,’ she says. ‘So hard.’ It occurs to Helen that Elizabeth may actually want sympathy and this adds to her feeling of rage. ‘God, how awful, what a mess,’ Elizabeth says.