An Evil Streak Read online

‘Because she might refuse,’ he said simply. ‘As long as I wait, I can still hope. I really can’t ask her without some encouragement, there’s too much at stake.’

  I considered this man, in his prime, sought-after like an estate agent’s favourite district, highly qualified, holding lives melodramatically in his hands when occasion demanded, completely demoralised by a girl I had seen grotesquely bandy in nappies, but who had now grown bewitching enough to torment us both.

  ‘Do you want me to put in a word for you?’ I asked, thinking the cliché was all he deserved. And yet I envied him: it wasn’t all contempt. He at least stood a chance.

  His face lit up flatteringly. ‘Would you? Would you really do that?’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ I said. ‘But I think you overrate my influence.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said curiously. ‘I don’t think that.’

  I was alerted to some danger I could not define. Perhaps I had underestimated Dr Clark. ‘Besides,’ I went on as if he had not spoken, ‘what if too much encouragement had the opposite effect? Gemma’s always led a very sheltered life, you know. Her mother’s seen to that. Now her mother obviously approves of you. Don’t you think the time may have come for Gemma to rebel?’

  He looked concerned. ‘You mean if her mother didn’t approve I might stand more chance?’

  ‘Right in one, Dr Clark,’ I said. ‘So why should I add my voice to the chorus of approval and ruin your chances altogether?’

  I could see that he did not enjoy my levity, but he was obliged, in the circumstances, to go on being civil to me. I saw myself rather as a malingering hypochondriac, tiresomely claiming too much of his time and attention but too profitable to be shaken off.

  ‘What do you suggest then?’ He still managed to be charming, even deferential, but I thought it was fairly clear that we disliked one another.

  ‘If I were you I should seduce her.’ I leaned back to observe the effect of this suggestion and thought I discerned shock.

  ‘That is, of course, if you haven’t already done so,’ I added, certain that he had not.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you.’ I had strained his courtesy to the limit: he was offended, both by the suggestion itself and by my intrusion into his privacy. I had trodden on sacred ground.

  ‘As a seducer,’ I went on, feeling the old-fashioned term was appropriate, ‘you would represent to Gemma something she knows would shock her mother.’

  He said quickly, ‘But her mother wouldn’t know.’

  ‘All the better. Gemma would be in possession of a secret – the delicious knowledge of behaving in a way her mother would consider wicked, while still being regarded as innocent. What could be more delightful? After all, there’s no way you can make yourself less eligible in Beatrice’s eyes. But there is a way you can appear more exciting to Gemma. At the moment, you are merely adoring, devoted, respectful. She probably knows you want to marry her, so she has the upper hand. But if you seduce her – without proposing – she’ll be confused. Dazzled with pleasure – one hopes—’ I added maliciously, ‘—yet prey to anxiety. Remember she’s an old-fashioned girl. The wind of change hasn’t blown very far into Surrey yet. She’ll be afraid of pregnancy, afraid of losing you. All the romantic novels she’s ever read will be there in the back of her mind to help you. A vision of herself dishonoured. Seduced and abandoned, like a popular heroine. Has she lost your respect? That dread word. Will another girl steal you away? What are your intentions? Has she ruined her future prospects? She’ll have sleepless nights. A proposal then and she’ll fall into your arms, weeping with gratitude.’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re talking about the middle ages,’ he said inaccurately.

  ‘I’m talking about Gemma. She’s been conditioned. By her mother, her background, her reading, her temperament. There are plenty of girls like her, no matter what the papers say.’ He instantly dismissed the heretical suggestion that Gemma might not be unique. ‘But it’s Gemma I love. I want to marry her.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m telling you how to do it.’

  Eight

  Gemma’s wedding: the small church banked high with flowers; the smell of incense (Beatrice of course was High Anglican); the quavering voice of the vicar, an elderly friend of the family, as he put forward the unlikely proposition that Christopher Clark should worship his bride with his body; the matron of honour Janet, the only friend from school (Gemma had never made friends easily), now hugely pregnant and about to leave for Canada with her husband, clutching her own and Gemma’s bouquet to her stomach like a wreath for her unborn child; the mad organist playing just a shade too fast for the choir; Beatrice’s snuffling tears of joy behind me as I declared beyond all reason that I gave this woman to be married to this man.

  They both spoke softly, seriously, their small clear voices audible yet tenderly faint. We were witnessing such a private ceremonial that we were almost intruders. The triumphal music afterwards (Widor, as I recall) made optimistic mockery of marriage as most of the congregation knew it, suggesting unalloyed bliss. Outside, some idiot with a camera clicked and clicked, making us line and regroup like soldiers in any combination from one to dozens, flashing our self-conscious smiles. At the reception, anaesthetised by champagne, I made some ridiculous speech about standing in loco parentis and Beatrice started to cry again. Christopher replied with something brisk and grateful, the couple circulated, cake that nobody wanted to eat was cut, and a lot of people got drunk.

  I could not see her clearly, my little one, in her swirl of white, with her smile for which no adequate praise had been invented, but I know she glided around the room and gave everyone a few precious moments of her time. Some hours must have passed, I suppose, but it seemed very soon that she was drifting away from me, unfamiliar in a new blue suit, still smiling but looking slightly puzzled by her own happiness, her own actions. There was a lot of noise and flowers were thrown and foolish people did things with shoes to the departing car and confetti fell like multi-coloured summer snow. The goodbye kisses were meaningless, only the ever-increasing distance between us was real, and I had lost her. ‘Thank God,’ said Beatrice by my side. ‘Thank God, thank God,’ until I wanted to kill her, until it would have given me the purest pleasure to squeeze and squeeze her neck until her face turned black and her eyes and tongue bulged out. I do not know what happens in these cases but I imagine it must be something satisfyingly repulsive. ‘Thank God, she’ll be safe with him,’ she breathed, as the car disappeared out of sight.

  When I got home, I wept.

  Nine

  She had said to me, ‘I suppose I must be in love with him.’ Wandering round my room, pale as a lover from mythology or folklore, not quite hearing what I said because a luminous veil of self-absorption hung between us. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she said, and looked at me, mutely imploring indulgence.

  It was so obvious: her whole system had undergone a severe shock. Well-brought-up girls take these things very seriously. The normal course of events, to be enjoyed, shrugged off and giggled over by others less respectable, to them is world-shattering.

  I said untruthfully, ‘Gemma, I don’t want to pry. But you can have a love affair, you know, your first or your hundredth, and it doesn’t have to mean you’re in love.’

  She coloured embarrassingly. I waited. ‘I can’t—’ she began, and stopped. ‘No, I really do love him,’ she said.

  I poured her a drink, and one for myself. At least it gave me time to think. I said, ‘Gemma, my love, listen to me. It can happen to any of us. At any age. It even happened to me once or twice. Can you believe that? It’s a fever, a disease. Delicious, engrossing, intoxicating, but it passes.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes above the glass challenging me to prove her love was not eternal.

  ‘You’re nineteen,’ I said futilely. ‘Don’t you realise how often this can happen in your life?’

  We stared at each other, completely sundered for the first t
ime. ‘I’m going to marry him,’ she said.

  I had known of course from the beginning that this was what we were discussing. I had done my work too well. Hoist with my own petard, I think is the expression, beloved of English schoolmasters, for elucidation in lessons on figures of speech; I believe I even included it in my own classic textbook, the one that still pays the rates.

  ‘I’m not trying to stop you marrying him,’ I said dishonestly. ‘But I am trying to stop you feeling that you must. Enjoy it, make the most of it, but wait till you’re rational again. Then if you still want to marry him – perhaps. But in a year, six months, you may not even want to know him. If you meet someone else you may find you’ve been drinking beer. The next one might be champagne.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, the classic words dividing youth from age.

  I was so frightened (though ashamed of my fear) that I did not attempt to argue. ‘I want to,’ I said.

  There was a long silence. She drank her drink and looked around the room. She had given up smoking under his influence but I could see her twitching as she missed the accustomed prop. ‘I can’t do without him,’ she said slowly. ‘Before’ – and the colour flooded her face again – ‘I think I took him for granted almost. You know – he was just someone who took me out. It was nice. I could tell he was keen on me. I felt… powerful. But now…’ She lapsed into long retrospective silence so erotic that it seemed to colour the room. ‘Now it’s different.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’ I felt myself becoming inadequate. ‘But it’s a drug. Believe me, Gemma. A drug.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what I want,’ she said defiantly.

  I got up. My drink was not finished but I put some more ice in it for punctuation. My head had never been clearer but I could see defeat grinning at me from a corner. I had been too clever for my own good and I had underestimated both Gemma’s appetite and Dr Clark’s ability.

  ‘You don’t have to marry your first love,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see, this whole experience just gives you an idea of your own potential. You’ve no idea what you might be able to achieve in the future.’

  She looked at me, shock turning to actual distaste. I saw it clearly; I had never seen it before. ‘You mean,’ she said slowly, ‘you want me to go on like this for the rest of my life? One affair after another? Is that what you want?’ She was so angry she had ceased to blush and the love-lorn pallor had returned. She had never looked more attractive: I wanted to scoop her up into my arms.

  Why not? was what I longed to say. Instead I said, ‘I want you to be happy.’ The truth, and yet how inadequate when what I meant was: I want you to suffer, survive, enjoy, despair, expand and die. I want you to live. That’s what I want for you.

  She said coldly, ‘That’s fine then. Because I’ll be happy with Chris.’ Then suddenly she relaxed and a look of rapture passed over her face. ‘Mummy’d be so shocked if she knew.’

  Ten

  It was about this time that I became involved with Oswald and Miranda. A petty, inadequate revenge, and one doomed to misfire, both by damaging me and failing to touch the person for whom it was intended. No: I am being too partisan. Strange how even at this distance old prejudice seeps through. It was simple compensation, if I am to be accurate. Not meant to hurt Gemma. Merely the last fling of an ageing, rejected lover. Not meant to hurt anyone, in fact, least of all myself. But my aim was unsteady.

  They both had other names, of course. I renamed them after they came under my spell. I could still in those days exercise a kind of magic, if I cared to put my mind to it. And I did care. Only life was too empty for me to be excessively particular in my choice.

  Oswald had a normal, healthy, attractive name that suited him admirably. He was a lively, athletic boy with an enquiring mind and the sort of enthusiasm that is the prerogative of the young. He radiated energy and curiosity. So I downgraded him: I envied his facility to charm and conquer. Miranda was a different matter. Pale and subdued in manner but with extraordinary hair, the yellowish-red colour of leaves that fall early, before the end of August. So she was upgraded, romanticised, removed from her ordinary little name. I like to pretend I cannot even remember what they were called before I set my mark upon them. I wanted to uplift her, to put her high above him, out of his reach. And him I wanted to degrade, to place far beneath her. Myself at the centre, I would have easy access to both.

  They sat at my feet, sometimes even literally, sprawled on the carpet, rolling their ridiculous unhygienic joints which I shared to bridge the generation gap. They had been thrown out of their lodgings for this curious modern habit, which made it easy for me to offer them shelter – easy but reckless. They were not in love, I swear they were not in love, then, as I looked at them, but they were entangled. Yet out of this entanglement came at first not strength but weakness. Separately I could not touch them; together they were vulnerable. Sometimes I used to wonder if they had in fact banded together for the sole unconscious purpose of being destroyed.

  I had the feeling that my interest in them made their relationship exist: I provided a hot-house climate in which it could flourish. They talked about themselves incessantly, as only the young seem able to do, never bored, finding their own emotions perpetually of absorbing fascination. Miranda’s pale grey-green eyes, startling in her freckled face, would glaze over with intensity as she analysed her feelings for Oswald; he would glow with absurd vivacity as he talked about her. They were like brother and sister: only my presence provided them with an incestuous bridge of words.

  Eleven

  ‘It’s a lovely little boy,’ Beatrice shrieked at me down the telephone. I glanced at my watch: it was half past four in the morning.

  ‘Is she all right?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘Eight pounds two ounces,’ yelled Beatrice as I spoke. ‘Isn’t that splendid? Oh, I’m so happy, I can’t believe it. I’m a grandmother. Christopher’s here, we’re drinking champagne. I’ve been crying. Aren’t I a fool?’

  ‘She’s all right then,’ I said.

  ‘What? Oh, Gemma. Yes, of course she’s all right, what d’you mean? Oh, I don’t know how to—’

  ‘Let me speak to him.’

  Silence, tinged with indignation. ‘Who? Christopher?’

  ‘You said he was with you.’

  Another pause. ‘Yes, of course he is. We’re celebrating.’

  ‘Then let me speak to him.’

  There was some muffled muttering and then he came on the line.

  ‘Alex. Sorry to wake you up, but we thought you’d want to be the first to know.’

  ‘You mean the third.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’ He actually laughed.

  ‘Is Gemma all right? Medically speaking, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, of course. She had a bit of a rough time but she’s fine now and the baby—’

  ‘I don’t want to know about the baby,’ I said. ‘Not yet. I want to know about Gemma. Give me your professional opinion. What sort of rough time did she have?’

  There was a short silence. When he spoke again his voice had iced over.

  ‘Well, it was a forceps delivery, which was a bit of bad luck for her, but she’s perfectly all right. Very tired but very happy.’

  He dispensed his knowledge so casually. The telephone was clammy in my hand. I reached for a cigarette and lit it with difficulty.

  ‘Stitches?’

  He seemed surprised at the question. ‘Well, yes, she had an episiotomy but that’s fairly routine—’

  ‘Not always,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand—’

  ‘On the contrary, I know all about it.’ I had spent Gemma’s pregnancy reading medical textbooks. ‘It can be avoided.’

  There was a sharp pause. Then: ‘I really don’t think we need go into all these details of my wife’s delivery. I can assure you she had the best of attention, in case you’re suggesting otherwise. Grayson is a first-rate chap, a personal friend of mine—’
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  I put down the phone.

  Twelve

  Gemma’s post-puerperal depression lasted a long time. In hospital she was euphoric, or, as Christopher had put it, ‘very tired but very happy’. She talked incessantly, like someone high on drugs or alcohol, extolling the baby and her own new exalted frame of mind. Motherhood had changed her, she said. She elaborated on this at great length but the gist of it was that she felt transformed by the elemental nature of the experience. Something like that. It all made me feel faintly sick, and possibly envious too. Christopher sometimes intruded on my hospital visits and sat there looking smug, though he forbore to use the actual words ‘I told you so’. Beatrice would also turn up, gushing as she unwrapped flowers, grapes and woolly animals, so I was seldom alone with Gemma.

  I gave her a silver bracelet, inscribed with the date of the child’s arrival, and studied her face. It was certainly true that motherhood had changed her, though not entirely in the way she meant. She looked subtly different, as if all her features had been taken apart during her ordeal, and though reassembled in the same order had somehow lost their former symmetry. There was a look of strain, of uncertainty, even of surprise at her own survival. She looked as though she had been very ill, or away on a long journey. She did not look, in a word, herself. It was like watching one of those films in which a secret agent is the double of the heroine and is forced to impersonate hen They are identical, even played by the same actress, and yet you know that something is wrong.

  When she got home with the child, an event to which she had been looking forward intensely, the euphoria gave way to continual fits of weeping. Beatrice tried to jolly her along; Dr Clark assured me it was all perfectly normal, a word to which I took great exception. Influenza may be normal too, or in certain countries smallpox or cholera, but that seems no reason not to take it seriously and extend some compassion to the sufferer. I was the only person who appeared to sympathise with Gemma: Dr Clark complained that this sympathy was misplaced because it only made her worse. ‘It’s quite a natural reaction,’ he said. ‘It happens to lots of women. They look forward to the whole thing so much that when it’s over they get a feeling of anticlimax. Maybe like publishing a book?’ he added feebly, to appeal to me. ‘And apart from that, they’re physically very tired and rundown and their hormones—’