An Evil Streak Read online

  ‘If I didn’t know you so well,’ said Beatrice, ‘I’d be really angry.’

  Four

  ‘Mummy’s being ridiculous,’ said Gemma crossly, curled up in the big armchair. ‘Everybody in my form has a boyfriend. I can’t be the only one who hasn’t, I’d feel so silly.’

  ‘Does that mean any boy would do?’ I said. ‘Or is Peter special?’

  He wasn’t, of course. I saw that at once. Her face puckered up with the effort of unaccustomed diplomacy.

  ‘He’s all right,’ she said slowly. ‘He’s very nice. I like him.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Well, you know.’ She appealed to me, with a gesture of the hands that I found particularly attractive, flexing her spatulate fingers with eloquent helplessness. ‘I’ve got to have someone to go out with, haven’t I? I mean I can’t not have a partner for the school dance, I’d feel awful. Everyone else has got somebody to go with.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘It would be dreadful to be a pariah at your age.’

  She pouted. ‘You’re laughing at me. What does that word mean?’

  ‘A social outcast.’

  ‘I thought it was a dog.’

  ‘It can be. Why did you pretend you didn’t know what it meant?’

  ‘I don’t, not really. It just makes me think of dogs.’

  ‘A dog of low caste in a Hindu village,’ I elaborated helpfully.

  ‘Poor dog.’

  ‘I expect it gets used to it. Maybe it doesn’t even know.’

  ‘I bet it does. I expect people keep kicking it and throwing stones at it. Are they beastly to dogs in India?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea.’

  ‘I bet they are,’ she said gloomily.

  I felt we had exhausted the dog, entertaining as it had been. I had, after all, a duty to Beatrice. ‘Gemma,’ I said tentatively. ‘This boy, what’s his name’

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Peter. Is he… fond of you, do you think?’

  She eyed me warily. ‘You’ve been talking to Mummy.’

  ‘Not exactly. She’s been talking to me. It’s not the same thing.’

  ‘No. Well, tell her he’s all right. He doesn’t… do anything.’ She flushed. ‘That’s what she’s worried about, isn’t it?’

  I hesitated. ‘Something like that.’ I thought we were on dangerous ground and I did not want to stem the flow of adolescent confidences.

  ‘Well, he doesn’t.’

  She sounded so grumpy that I felt expected, even compelled, to ask, ‘Do you wish he would?’

  The flush deepened but she showed no sign of wanting to put an end to the conversation. ‘Other people’s boyfriends do.’

  ‘Do they?’ I said. ‘Or do they just say they do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked grateful. ‘That’s what I keep wondering. I mean, I don’t believe everything I’m told.’

  ‘No,’ I said gravely. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But I think it’s true. Some of it, anyway. I don’t think Janet would tell me lies.’

  ‘Is she your best friend?’

  ‘Yes. She might exaggerate a bit but I think most of it’s true. Anyway, Peter’s not a bit like her boyfriend. Do you think he really likes me?’

  ‘At least as much as you like him.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Well, he may need a partner for the school dance too.’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of that. So he doesn’t really fancy me at all, that’s why he hasn’t even kissed me.’ She stared at her skirt and blushed, looking so young, confused and irresistible that it was all I could do not to kiss her myself.

  ‘Of course he fancies you,’ I said. ‘He’s just being respectful. Your mother would be proud of him.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit boring. I feel terribly out of it when everyone else is talking about what they did at the weekend. I’ll have to start making things up soon.’ She was totally serious. ‘I can’t talk to Janet at all at the moment, I’d feel so silly if she knew. I can’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘You can talk to me,’ I said.

  ‘Can I?’ She seemed actually grateful. ‘Can I really? You don’t mind? You don’t think I’m silly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m a dead loss. I mean, you don’t think every boy I meet’s going to be like Peter?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I certainly don’t.’

  She relaxed a little. ‘That’s all right then. Only – we’re doing Romeo and Juliet this term and I had to read that speech, you know, the one about the fiery-footed steeds and all that…’

  ‘I know the one.’

  She looked up, pausing dramatically: such eyes, that a man could have drowned in, or a boy, even such an insensitive retarded lout as Peter obviously was.

  ‘Did you know I’m the same age as Juliet?’

  The naivety and self-importance of the young never cease to astonish me. ‘Yes. A few weeks younger, actually.’

  She lowered her eyes again and I had to content myself with admiring the lashes. ‘I wish something would happen.’

  Five

  Very little did happen, though, for several years: Beatrice saw to that. Gemma was kept at school for as long as possible, then transferred to some other establishment where she learnt to cook, type and arrange flowers. She was not sent abroad: Beatrice could not accept that any surveillance, however expensive, would be as effective as her own, and she had traditionally British fears about the unbridled appetites of continental men. English appetites, though presumably under better control, were further diluted by numbers and a deliberate policy of confusion. Gemma’s young men – I abandoned all attempts to memorise their names after the luckless Peter Hughes had been dismissed – were alternately welcomed and spurned. ‘Mummy’s in one of her moods,’ became an essential statement in Gemma’s life. Although my sympathies lay naturally with Gemma, I had to admire – as an artist – the skill with which Beatrice over-encouraged the young men (till Gemma grew sick of them) or subtly allowed them to make fools of themselves, or let them softly perish through cold neglect. She also developed headaches and various mysterious ailments, despite which she nobly tried ‘to do my best for you, darling,’ so that Gemma, whether coming home reluctantly early from a dance or sourly submitting to an uncongenial dinner party, was forced to admit that her mother had only her welfare at heart and would make any sacrifice to give her pleasure. Therefore she could not accept these sacrifices and offered her own instead.

  Beatrice was aided, of course, by the fact that none of the young men provided exactly what Gemma was looking for, and whatever qualities they did possess were generally lost in the crowd that Beatrice encouraged under the pretext of giving Gemma ‘a good time’. Safety in numbers is a sound though old-fashioned policy, but I have never seen it pursued with greater verve. Poor Gemma, of course, wanted only to fall in love, but like an animal trying in vain to make a nest, was never allowed to settle long enough to build anything but the most flimsy structure.

  We talked, she and I, at intervals, and always with a feeling of trust and intimacy, although often in a vague and elliptical way. Knowing that I was the only person in whom she chose to confide completely (there was a touch of rivalry between her and Janet) was a heady sensation. Listening to her words, seeing the play of emotion on her face, I sometimes felt she was more truly mine than if I had penetrated her. She was still a virgin, I was sure of that. The young men changed constantly; the miracle remained unaccomplished. I ran over her complaints in my mind.

  — ‘He’s very attractive and he makes me laugh, but we never talk about anything important.’

  — ‘He’s so intellectual – why doesn’t he kiss me more often?’

  — ‘He’s awfully nice, just like a brother. I wish I fancied him.’

  — ‘I don’t feel comfortable with him at all. I keep waiting for him to pounce.’

  Affection made me dishonest and, much as I might
have lied to a terminal cancer patient about their chances of recovery, I tried to convince her that she would one day find all the qualities she sought in one person – despite all the evidence around her to the contrary. Love, or the desire for love, is after all very like a fatal illness. She latched eagerly onto my reassurances. ‘Do you really think I will? Oh, I do hope so. It’s not a bit the way I imagined it.’ Poor child, she was nourished on romantic literature. ‘Give it time; be patient,’ I tried to say, but these are the qualities that youth thinks it can least afford. She was almost nineteen. Five years of half-measures, of endless popularity and continual disappointment: that must have been far more searing than my jaundiced middle age. If you expect little or nothing, you are seldom let down, but poor Gemma was young and therefore expected everything.

  Six

  Christopher Clark: the very name has a fine solid English ring to it. Lacking the affectation of a final ‘e’, it suggests the courage of its own convictions. Insert the prefix ‘Dr’ and you have a pillar of society, the dependable middle-class professional man, dedicated to doing good and making money, and seeing no contradiction between the two. No wonder Beatrice was excited.

  ‘Such a nice young man… a doctor, you know… only thirty… and he seems really interested in Gemma.’ These essential points were reiterated breathlessly, monotonously, incoherently to me throughout weeks of increasing hysteria. Beatrice had sighted land; she had struck oil; her ship had come in. I realise of course that I mix my metaphors, a practice I normally deplore; but for once only mixed metaphors will serve to convey the flurry of Beatrice’s conversation. After a lifetime of wading through shells containing nothing but boring old oysters, she had at last discovered a pearl.

  I was reluctant at first to examine this pearl, preferring to indulge my own fantasy. I imagined a hearty young man (Gemma had met him at the tennis club), fair and florid in the traditional English way, inclined to sweat but terribly good in a crisis. Gemma herself did not talk about him: not having heard the wedding bells resounding in Beatrice’s ears, she imagined she had merely found a good partner for the mixed doubles tournament. There was, of course, great competition in the village for such an eligible young man, newly arrived in the district to join an expanding practice, but, luckily for Beatrice, Gemma’s beauty, her affability and her more than adequate backhand made her a clear winner.

  Christopher Clark: I could not have been more wrong about him. A thin young man, taller than I expected when he rose from his chair to greet me; dark-haired, sallow-skinned, almost gaunt in the face as if from fatigue or starvation; looking older than his years, then (a sudden smile lighting up the hollows) looking younger and full of that rare commodity, genuine charm; shaking hands firmly, asking how I was and actually seeming to care. I thought of his patients being greeted by this apparition in the surgery: surely at least half their psychosomatic ailments would disappear on sight.

  We waited for Gemma (he was taking her out to dinner to celebrate their victory on the court) and he asked me politely about my journey down, my whereabouts in London, my profession, and the pleasures of weekending in the country, all as if my answers were of the greatest possible concern to him. He chatted amiably about himself in return, but without revealing very much. Perhaps there was not much to reveal.

  Gemma was late: a bad sign, I thought. Beatrice called up the stairs to her and plied us with more drinks. I accepted; Christopher Clark declined, as a driver. I applauded his willpower.

  ‘Oh, it’s not difficult,’ he said deprecatingly. ‘I never do drink very much. What I’d really like now is a cigarette but unfortunately I’ve given them up.’

  He spoke as if this had been an accident or an arbitrary decision imposed from above, rather than a matter of his own personal choice. I admired his prudence but I did not warm to him. It is the misfortune of prudence to be admirable rather than attractive. I even began to wonder if Gemma had not in fact found herself rather a dull dog, as they say. Then we heard her step on the stair and the dull dog pricked up its ears and started to wag its tail. I caught a look of complacency on Beatrice’s face before she disguised it. Gemma came in, looking and smelling delicious and acting offhand, with the sort of confidence a woman only has when she knows she is about to be unconditionally admired. ‘Hullo, Chris, sorry to keep you waiting,’ announced carelessly, flung over her shoulder as she turned to me: ‘When did you get here? Oh, how lovely to see you,’ and hugging me, though more for his benefit than mine, I felt.

  I did not allow myself to be distracted by Gemma: I made a fuss of her as a loving uncle should but kept my eyes on her escort. His face was flushed; he had knocked over his empty glass (and not even noticed) when he stood up to greet Gemma. Suddenly he seemed too tall, and his hands and feet too large. Now he turned to Beatrice. ‘We won’t be late back. I’ll take great care of her.’ Already they were partners in conspiracy. Gemma seemed unconcerned, flitting round the room, cramming nuts and olives into her mouth and sipping Beatrice’s sherry. ‘Gemma, darling, you can have a drink of your own if you want one,’ Beatrice remonstrated lovingly, playing the affectionate mother to Dr Clark’s attentive suitor.

  ‘No, no, then we’ll be late for dinner and that will never do,’ said wicked Gemma, enjoying her power. ‘Chris will be cross. Hey, that’s rather good. Chris-cross.’ She giggled.

  ‘Gemma, that’s not fair,’ said Beatrice. ‘You’re much too indulgent with her, Dr Clark.’ I heard her revelling in the prefix. Gemma swooped down on us both with goodbye kisses; Dr Clark shook hands. They were gone. Beatrice sat back with a sigh and allowed a smile of self-congratulation to spread over her large face. I poured myself another drink. Before she could ask me what I thought, I said, ‘Oh yes, he’s in love with her all right.’

  Seven

  For the first time in her life Gemma became secretive. I knew of course that she and Dr Clark were frequently together but I knew it only because of Beatrice’s squeaks of approval, to which I was subjected almost daily on the telephone. Gemma herself said nothing and I felt it would be a confession of weakness to ask. I had never been excluded from her confidence before: I did not know how to handle it. The pain of it surprised me, I who had thought myself at last immune to such humiliations. To have it proved to me that there was still even a fraction of my heart that could be so vulnerable was alarming, to say the least. I feared the loss of control: over Gemma and over myself.

  So I could hardly have been more surprised when a few weeks later Dr Clark rang up. He sounded nervous. ‘I’m sorry to presume on a brief acquaintance,’ he said. ‘I got your number from the phone book.’

  I was immediately cheered. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Why not?’ He could easily have obtained the information from Gemma or Beatrice: that he had not done so suggested conspiracy, which is always attractive.

  ‘The fact is—’ he said, and hesitated. I didn’t help him.

  ‘Well, I want your advice.’

  I invited him to lunch at my club, where he appeared ill at ease. After very little small talk he said abruptly, ‘You see, the thing is, I want to marry Gemma but I don’t know how she feels about me.’

  ‘Well, neither do I,’ I said unhelpfully.

  ‘She hasn’t talked to you then?’ he asked, with an eager acceptance of doom.

  ‘If she has,’ I said, ‘you can hardly expect me to betray her confidence – now can you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ He played with the food on his plate; he looked more than ever gaunt and shadowed, totally vulnerable. I began to enjoy our conversation. ‘I just thought… as she thinks so much of you, as your opinion is obviously very important to her…’

  ‘Yes?’ I was gratified. If Gemma had not talked to me of him, at least it appeared that she had talked to him of me.

  ‘Well, I thought you could give me some idea, I mean if I should speak to her… if you think I stand a chance.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why you haven’t asked her already,’ I said, taking pity o
n him, although in fact the reason was perfectly obvious: love had completely eroded whatever self-confidence he normally possessed. I was interested to observe such an old-fashioned phenomenon at close range: Dr Clark, it struck me, might well have been the hero of a Victorian novel. ‘Don’t you realise that every mother with a marriageable daughter has been after you from the moment you set foot in the village?’

  He smiled. As usual his face lightened, making him seem positively attractive. If Gemma was not in love with him, it could only be because he was so obviously in love with her. ‘I wouldn’t have noticed,’ he said. ‘As soon as I saw Gemma—’ He paused, and I wondered what extravagance he was about to commit. ‘Well, I suppose it seems ridiculous to you, you can’t possibly see her as I do, but to me… well, she’s everything.’

  The usual inadequate hyperbole. I was lost for a moment, witnessing absolute love. Other people’s emotions never fail to absorb me. The intensity with which they feel creates my belief in their value as human beings. Unlike me, they have not yet opted out, not yet discovered that human feelings are treacherous and doomed to end sooner or later in boredom or pain. I longed to pitch Dr Clark into this maelstrom of suffering, to see if he would swim or sink: he was obviously yearning for a guiding hand to shove him over the edge. I longed also to involve Gemma in something beyond her control: then surely she would confide in me again. Or was she silent because he had become less manageable and more special? Was she threatening me with a sudden need for privacy?

  ‘So why haven’t you asked her?’ I said.