She pulled away. ‘Listen, no stealing father’s paintings, and trying to sell them like you did in Lincolnshire. Next time he’ll get you ten years in the nick.’
He was silent for a moment, gritting his teeth. ‘I haven’t stolen anything for months.’
She sighed heavily, the good mood going. ‘Just leave things alone.’
Not wanting to upset her, he counted the raindrops that kicked against the window, watched how they joined forces before streaming down the glass. ‘A blue van passed the house three times yesterday.’
‘Was your mother in it?’
‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I can’t wake up properly in the morning.’
‘Your mother’s got a powder blue mini-van, but she’s in Lincolnshire.’
‘There was a policeman in this one,’ he said. ‘On the lookout.’
She kept up a normal response: ‘Don’t worry, love. They aren’t after you.’
There was a shine of superiority in his deep brown eyes, then a glint of reproach, ending in infinite regret that he had married such an uneducated slut. ‘You don’t understand.’
I chose him, she thought, looking at him with a tender smile, not him me. When I first saw him. I wanted him to love me, and he fucked me nicely because he’s big and slow and tried to care because he thought he wasn’t able to. If he’d picked me I suppose I might have got a better deal because then his mother would have been on our side and given us some of her money, which would have made him happier. But I’d rather make the choice myself and get a dud, than be chosen by any bloody man like I was a slave, even if he did turn out to be better than Ralph.
‘We’ll get away from it all,’ she said. ‘Just you and me. Find a cottage and live on our own. Then if I have a baby it’ll be marvellous because nobody from the house will get their hands on it. We’ll be happy, and you won’t think people are trailing you. You’ll be your old self again.’
‘What is my old self?’ he asked mournfully.
‘You’ll know when it happens, you big daft thing.’
‘I’ll get some money so that we can buy a cottage.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, happy that he’d spoken more in half an hour than for a whole week.
‘Everytime that mini-van passed it had a different number-plate.’
She pulled her coat tight to keep out the cold. ‘It couldn’t have been the same car, then.’
‘I recognised the driver. He must have altered the number before passing the house. It’s easy. I once changed it on my mother’s car — from an old car in the barn that we didn’t use anymore — and she didn’t notice till the policeman stopped her because her brake lights weren’t working. He let her off because he knew her. Or he knew my father, who sends him a bottle of whisky every Christmas.’
‘You’ll get pneumonia if you don’t shut up,’ she said. ‘You’re always playing them rotten tricks.’
‘Why do you think it is?’ he asked sadly.
‘How do I know if you don’t?’ she sulked.
‘I’m asking you. But nobody can give me a good answer. People aren’t sympathetic. I ask your mother what’s wrong with the world, and she tells me to wash the dishes. I ask Cuthbert and he tells me with a leer to believe in God. I ask your father, and he tells me to give him back the circle I cut from the painting I stole. I ask Dawley, and he tells me that if I get a job in a factory all my problems will be solved. Richard and Adam invite me to a game of guerrilla warfare on their maps. At the moment they’ve got a General Strike going, and they’re working out schemes of deployment with all the army units in England.’
‘They play around like kids,’ she said.
‘And when I ask you, you just tell me to shut up.’
‘It’s a shame Uncle John isn’t here anymore.’
‘He committed suicide,’ he said, helping her down from the step. His large hulking form went in front, trailing a hand behind whose fingers she held. They walked along the village street, he in the same self-protective forward hunch, Mandy much smaller though no mean presence by his side. What was he trying to protect in himself by this loping stance? Sometimes it was worse, and he walked like a man who had just recovered from bronchitis. It had got really bad in the last few weeks. He was trying to hold something into himself which he couldn’t live without — an illness, a weakness, even maybe a secret strength that he couldn’t bear anyone to know existed. She was glad of the silence on their walk to the house.
The trouble is, he thought, I don’t know myself, and so I don’t exist. And if I don’t exist, others don’t exist either, so how can they know me, or even see me, and how can I know them, or see them? They don’t see me, so first I’ve got to make them see me. What can I do to make them see me?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The longer she delayed opening Shelley’s trunk and taking out the notebooks, the more afraid she became to do so. It lay under the bed, and the key was part of a bunch on the dressing-table by the window. They were warm from the sun when she picked them up. She put them down again, and finished dressing. Someone knocked at her door.
‘Quien es?’
‘Enid.’
‘Come in.’
‘I’m driving to Hitchin market. Do you want to help?’
‘All right. I won’t be long.’
Enid sat on the bed. Her long hair was snaked up into a pile, and her face was remarkably unlined for a woman of over forty. ‘How do you like being with us?’
‘Time drifts by. I’m not sure I like being in England, but it’s nice here.’ She sprinkled perfume from a bottle of Maderas de Oriente on her neck and under the arms, where Enid saw demure sprouts of black hair. She put on a sweater.
‘You’re very attractive. You’ll have to find a boyfriend.’
‘That’s not so easy. Do you have one?’
Enid laughed. ‘I’ve been too busy bringing up children.’
‘You should look for one.’ She took her shoulder bag, and lifted the trunk keys to bring them with her, but thought Enid might see it as a gesture of mistrust against the community, so left them where they were. ‘Does Albert have girl friends?’
‘Not as far as I know.’ Enid was ready to go. ‘At least I’ve never caught him at it. Neither of us has ever had many friends of any sort.’ They stood close, and Maricarmen came forward. The kiss was brief on the dry skin, and they rested a few moments, arms on shoulders, a warmth of tranquillity and understanding. In sensing the youthfulness of Maricarmen’s body Enid realised how much more alive she might become if she got to know a younger man. ‘Stay as long as you like,’ she said, pressing Maricarmen’s warm hands. Her own fingers were cold, and she enjoyed such contact.
Ralph watched them get into the Rambler. He had been up since early morning, but Mandy stayed in bed, exhausted by his menacing fluctuating moods of the last few days — though they had lifted slightly since the turgid mechanism of his mind had decided to do something.
He knew that every move depended on personal, spiritual energy. The only problem left in the world was how to stop going mad when that energy withdrew from you. If he felt ill, either in the stomach or the soul, he did not even have the strength to go to a doctor, or talk to anyone about it. But energy always lurked somewhere in the chaos of his mind, though it rarely turned into action. That which stayed was not energy at all. But when he acted without thought it never occurred to him to think he was energetic, and so it did not help to console him for all the times when he’d been listless and without hope.
The two women drove away, and he walked towards the back door with a large plastic bag folded neatly under his arm. How is it possible, he wondered, to stop what you are going to do if you are going to do it?