When the World Was Steady Page 13

  Neither Buddy nor Emmy saw the fluttering white chiffon on the veranda, but Aimée had watched them, closely, until they had disappeared together beneath the veranda’s overhang beneath her feet.

  Max couldn’t believe it. This was like a nightmare. He was stoned but not that stoned. He and Jenny: only minutes ago he had been tracing the outline of her shoulder, her neck, her jaw—and it had been fantastic, as if there wasn’t anyone in the room besides them. She had looked pretty happy too. Or so he had thought. His stomach had been hurting, but he had hardly felt it; what had been bothering him far more was the need to pee. And when it couldn’t be ignored any longer, he had gone.

  In the loo, the combination of his bladder and the aftermath of his shots had assailed him and, while peeing, he had almost puked. But he had finished and washed his face. He could guarantee that his malaise had lasted no more than a minute.

  But now she was gone. There were still people in the room, even some dancing, but she wasn’t one of them. He looked on the veranda, where Ruby lay sleeping on a rattan sofa, and Aimée, impassive, chain-smoked beside her. But Jenny wasn’t there.

  It occurred to him that she might have chosen to prepare herself, in his room, so he went up. But no lights were on, and nothing stirred but the gecko in the thatch. He went out to his small terrace, to see whether he could see her, wandering, perhaps, in the garden by the pool, or on the path towards the road.

  And then he heard her childlike giggle. It came again, from next door, muffled by the half-open shutters of his father’s room and by the billowing curtains. But it was Jenny, no doubt about it.

  Max took off his clothes, lay on the bed, and tried to cry. Short of tearing the house down, it seemed the only appropriate response. No tears would come, but as his eyes remained resolutely dry, great whorls of pain spiralled outwards from the bite on his neck.

  He felt as though he was on fire. He knew it was the doctor’s fault. He got up to vomit, and his toes seemed to strike shards of glass with each step. Vomiting eased the pain a little, and brought tears to his eyes, but Max still felt as though he were being stabbed inside and out. Even his soul, he thought, was being stabbed.

  He lay there and felt terrible and wondered whether he would throw up again, until he started to sweat and fell asleep—two things, both at once pleasant and unpleasant, that occurred at exactly the same time.

  Emmy listened to the fading sounds of the disbanding guests, as she lay in bed and pressed her toes against the crisp sheet. She didn’t know what to make of anything any more. Buddy’s breath, so briefly against her cheek, had been warm, sweet and alcoholic, reminiscent of rum. She could still feel and smell it.

  She conjured his stocky, athletic form in her mind’s eye and compared it with the lean, patrician physique of her ex-husband. William had never been sexy. She imagined Buddy meeting Pod, and she smiled. It would be absurd if, after all the tension over Pietro, Emmy were to bring home someone equally unsuitable.

  But this was nonsense. An amicable kiss did not constitute a romance. Nothing of the kind. The man hadn’t bothered to notice her, Emmy knew, until she was somehow useful. He abused trust and affection; he chased girls, not women; he was possibly a law-breaker, a drug-dealer, even. And Emmy was not, she reassured herself, a fool. Absolutely not. But still, but yes, she had to ask herself whether, if the opportunity were to arise … And no, she didn’t want to, couldn’t, answer.

  LONDON

  AS ANGELICA REACHED for the mixing bowl in which she intended to make the salad, she could feel it splitting, slightly, along its large crack. Twice repaired, it was really two halves of a bowl held together by Superglue and some obscure law of physics. An obscure and obviously defective law of physics. But Angelica had neither time nor another bowl; Nikhil was coming for supper, in a matter of minutes, and the salad wasn’t made, the salmon mousse hadn’t been decorated, while she herself was still in her slip, with her hair pinned up in a ramshackle, inelegant way. And Angelica wanted things to go well.

  Were she to pursue her duty rather than her pleasure, she ought to be visiting Virginia on this evening. It was Saturday, and Virginia’s mother had called yesterday to say that ‘Virginia was feeling very poorly and might be for some time’. Unfortunately, she’d called when Angelica was extremely busy at work, and while Angelica had heard, and hadn’t forgotten, she had been unable to garner the details of Virginia’s illness, which, in a funny way, made it seem unreal. And of course she had invited Nikhil on Thursday, before she had known that there was anything the matter with Virginia, and there was a certain degree of duty—neighbourly, friendly—being discharged in this engagement as well.

  Angelica, as she smattered her face with powder using a large, feathery brush, decided to consider who needed her more, this being where her Christian duty obviously lay. Virginia, if ill, was most likely asleep; if not, then she was being tended by her mother—granted, an imperfect companion, but certainly her friend was not alone. Angelica knew that Virginia would be secretly hoping for a visit from her Angel, but were she to abandon Nikhil, he would sit amid textbooks in his little flat, alone and possibly unloved in a country far from home. Dismayed at the thought, Angelica squeezed rather feverishly at the pump spray of her perfume, and succeeded in enveloping both herself and her clothing in a daunting volume of scent. At which juncture, of course, there was a knock at the door.

  Nikhil came into the centre of her sitting-room and blinked in the early evening light. She saw him eye the table set for two, and blink more furiously still.

  ‘Drink? What would you like?’ she twittered. ‘I’ve got both gin and scotch hidden away here—although you mustn’t tell Virginia. She’s practically signed the pledge!’ She paused, attempting to gauge Nikhil’s discomfort. ‘How about a glass of this delightful-looking Soave you’ve brought? Yummy!’

  ‘I don’t actually drink alcohol,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind then—you and everyone else I know.’

  He settled on a mixture of orange juice and mineral water, which he held on his knee, looking dark and faintly miserable in the embrace of a voluptuous peach armchair.

  ‘I’ll be right with you,’ Angelica called from the kitchen. She hadn’t expected such nerves. She resolved to generate patter. Perhaps she would be visiting Virginia after all.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she called, ‘that I didn’t ask anyone else. I mean, you might have preferred it?’

  His protest, from the depths of the chair, was feeble.

  ‘It’s just that I only ever see you with a cast of thousands—our neighbourhood God Squad! And I thought, after all those helpings of cake and all the times you’ve listened to us chattering away, that it’d be nice for me to get to know you a little. To hear what interests you, you know? Really nice.’

  There was silence from the sitting-room and then Nikhil said, ‘You’ve been speaking about me to Virginia Simpson?’

  This brought Angelica to the kitchen door, from which she fixed his dark eyes with her large blue ones. ‘What on earth makes you say that? How very peculiar! Of course not.’

  ‘But she came to see me.’

  ‘She stopped off, I know, before the meeting on Wednesday, because I wasn’t home yet. I suppose, subconsciously, it may have made me think, but—’

  ‘So this is not a campaign to convert me?’

  Angelica, indelicate though it was, guffawed. ‘To convert you? Whatever to? To our God Squad?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Certainly not.’ There was a level on which she found Nikhil’s suggestion offensive, although this was in itself troubling, as proselytizing was part of her Christian mission. ‘Look at it this way,’ she said after a generous swallow of her gin and tonic, ‘the best advertisement for what we’re on about is our meeting itself.’ He made a face, which made her laugh. ‘OK, maybe not the best advert. But you come, after all, which is more than most. And you’re not even a Christian! So you see, if you’re willing to do our recruitment for
us, why would we work overtime? If I wanted a potential Christian around for supper, trust me, I know plenty of them. I have other friends, you know. Unlike some of our number.’

  ‘Surely the company of the ungodly must put you at constant risk?’ Nikhil asked. He didn’t seem to be joking.

  ‘It’s not as though I’ve taken closed orders, honestly, just because I live through my faith and am happy to admit it.’

  ‘What does it mean, then, for you to do so?’

  ‘Goodness, you are serious. Be careful, or I’ll mistake you for a potential after all!’

  ‘I’d like to know.’

  ‘Oh, Nikhil. I don’t much feel like talking about it.’ This was not the turn Angelica had hoped the conversation would take. She had even given herself licence to forget all that this evening. She had decided to sin a little, if it seemed appropriate. And then, of course, to repent. But this could hardly be admitted. ‘It’s not easy to talk about,’ she said. ‘It’s very personal, I think. Let’s just say that I had some bad experiences, and it was God who showed me a way out. I mean, I really believe that song you’re taught as children, “God is Love”, you don’t know it, I suppose? Well, I guess it just means that God’s love is there for me if I allow it to be, and it’s the only thing that makes life meaningful. The only thing I’ve found, anyway.’

  ‘And the church, your church?’

  ‘What about it? They’re the people who believe what I believe, and we celebrate together. In a way that’s truly alive. Our faith is very strong. Is that so strange?’

  ‘But the teachings?’

  ‘You’ll have to come and see, Nikhil. You’ll have to come to church and see. It’s the only way to explain. God is there, like an energy, this incredible force in the room. And He can work miracles. He does.’

  ‘And His judgements?’

  ‘I just don’t think my feelings can be put into words. Not properly. Anyway, you hear all this from the group, all the time. Surely it’s my turn to ask questions?’

  Nikhil gestured acquiescence.

  ‘For example, why do you want to know?’

  ‘Isn’t it about who you are?’

  ‘Oh honestly, it’s part of who I am, but so is whether I eat oysters or whether my parents divorced when I was a child.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘They did, in case you care. But I wanted to ask you questions. About India. About what it’s like?’

  Nikhil was not as shy as she had thought, and proved eager to talk about his home. He conjured up smells and tastes and the little noises of people living their lives, but against this backdrop he set the outline of a life that sounded remarkably unexotic, that sounded, in some respects, quite akin to an adolescence in north London. Oh, of course, in many ways he made clear how different it was, and when he spoke about his sister, her upbringing sounded more constrained than Angelica’s. But she didn’t sound such a different person to Angelica; she sounded like someone Angelica could be friends with, with whom she could indulge the wild streak that had to be hidden at all costs from people like Virginia Simpson. When Nikhil told her about Rupica’s elopement, Angelica felt deeply satisfied.

  ‘That’s exactly,’ she said, ‘what I would’ve done.’

  Nikhil recoiled in surprise, and a glob of salmon mousse fell from his fork to his trousers.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Maybe then you can tell me why?’

  ‘Lust for adventure, I suppose. For the new, for what’s unknown and exciting.’

  ‘These alone are not reasons, not for this decision. It has something to do with her understanding of God, with the appeal of Christianity.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Angelica said, hoping the room’s pink light would mask her embarrassment. ‘Maybe it’s a whole lot of things at once. Maybe she found him exciting, and she found his beliefs exciting, because loving a person and loving God—or the gods_—it’s all bound up together, isn’t it? Like, it’s like, loving him gave her access to a new way of loving everything. So that then she had two ways, her own and his.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Nikhil said, to his mousse.

  ‘Well, it’s just a thought. It’s just how I would feel, I mean, say, if I fell in love with a Hindu, say, with someone like you—’

  He looked up and quickly down again. Angelica had overstepped, she felt. She’d embarrassed both of them. She stood up and started to clear, aware that Nikhil was looking her in the bosom because he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the face.

  ‘I’d love to meet her. She sounds terrific. Tell me again, where is she living?’

  ‘Scotland. The Isle of Skye. I have an address. I haven’t written.’

  ‘Skye’s gorgeous. And summer is the time to go. Right around now, it’s daylight till midnight. It’s spectacular. Have you thought of it?’

  ‘I have a lot of work. And she and I, we have not spoken since then.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t have that much work. And there’s no time like the present for healing rifts. You know, in the Jewish faith they have a day set aside in the calendar for making amends. For patching up broken relationships. It’s a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Yom Kippur is in the autumn. And I am not Jewish.’ Nikhil was getting prickly.

  ‘I could go with you. I could be your guide. I love Skye. We used to go there on holiday when I was a child. I’d take you to all my favourite places. We always stayed in a wonderful old hunting lodge called the Tarbish Hotel, where I used to fish in the river with my father. And there are amazing mountains—the landscape is incredible! I could show you so much—we’d have such fun! I’m on holiday this coming week, in fact.’

  Angelica had overstepped again, this time perhaps too far.

  ‘You will forgive me,’ Nikhil said, with a stiffness and solemnity whose origin was not clear, ‘If I protest that we hardly know each other.’

  She ground the coffee in a rage. Rage at herself and her stupidity. Because now it was perfectly clear—it was the only thing she could see clearly—that she would be visiting Virginia this evening after all.

  By Saturday afternoon, Virginia was ready to get out of bed. The events of a few days before seemed to have receded to a fuzzy past that might have been weeks or even months ago. She knew she had been sleeping a lot, and she knew that there were reasons why she wanted only to keep on sleeping, but she wasn’t quite sure what they were, and her irritating tree-trunk of a mother wouldn’t say.

  ‘You’re just a little worn out, Ginny,’ Mrs Simpson kept repeating, as she tucked the sheets around Virginia’s chin and tried to keep her from rising. ‘You’ve been overwrought. And the doctor has left these for you to take.’ Whereupon she would pop a smooth, plasticky tablet on Virginia’s horrified tongue and ply her with water.

  By late Saturday afternoon, it simply seemed imperative that Virginia get up. When her mother came in yet again and started fiddling with the sheets, Virginia slid up from her prone position—as slippery as a fish, she thought, as she did so—and swung her feet to the floor. Nothing Mrs Simpson could say could stop Virginia running a bath and laying out her clothes and announcing that when she was dressed she was going to see the vicar.

  To that, Mrs Simpson merely threw up her hands and muttered something incomprehensible about where angels fear to tread, which Virginia hardly noticed because she was eagerly sliding her bony self—once again, she made note, with an ichthyoid ease—into bathwater which proved far too hot. By the time she was dressed, she felt much less like venturing out. Wooziness had overcome her while she buckled her sandals. But Mrs Simpson had only to ask whether she thought her outing absolutely wise and necessary for Virginia to become obdurate.

  The church was silent and desolate. To the passer-by, on a weekday, it might almost have appeared a redundant church, with its overgrown shrubberies, its faded, graffiti-smeared sign and the abundance of pigeon droppings on its doorstep. It might almost have been described as forlorn, were it not that Virginia knew Sunday morning would bring life, fervou
r and spirit anew.

  St Luke’s was a dilapidated country-style church with hideous hexagonal glass extensions—modern, shabby, with tatty brown curtains—one at each end of the original building. One addition, the one most visible from the street, was for the Sunday school, and offered up scabby beanbag chairs and primitive crayon renditions of Christ among his disciples to the observant pedestrian. The extension where the choir rehearsed, and where morning coffee was held after the service, might have given a more presentable view to the world, but it was screened from the road by the bulk of the church itself.

  Treading the overgrown path to the grimed church doors required all of Virginia’s concentration. She watched her white sandals plant step after step, and she paused on the threshold to regain her composure. One wanted, after all, to be utterly oneself when entering the house of the Lord. She wasn’t sure whether the Reverend would be in the church or at home in his vicarage, a grim modern edifice of similar architecture to the extensions, but she thought to seek him first in the place of worship, thereby allowing herself the luxury of a prayer before an empty altar. Saturday was not a time when she generally made this pilgrimage, unless, of course, it was her turn with the flowers. But when, in the past, she had popped in for counsel or reflection, she had often found the Reverend Thompson busy in the vestry, sorting books, or making order after a wedding. Upon occasion she had found him simply praying, kneeling in a pew like a common parishioner, with his eyes upon the altar and his thoughts, Virginia always assumed, on the glory of the infinite.

  A late shaft of sunlight filtered in one of the higher windows, casting shadows in the corners of the church. But otherwise, Virginia felt this was a calm and untroubled place. A weight and a confusion were lifted from her, and she slipped on to one of the hard benches as if into the arms of a lover. She rested her forehead on the back of the pew in front, and she opened her dialogue with her Maker.