The Needle's Eye Page 4

  Over coffee, he began to calm down a little: he made himself useful by handing round the coffee cups: and found when he had done so that there was only one possible place left for him to sit, which was next to the agency woman who was talking, in a low and intimate voice, to Rose Vassiliou. So he sat by her, yet again, and he could not help overhearing the conversation, so strident were her low tones: she was talking about her ex-husband, he gathered, and he was so confidently sure that it was one of those tedious, unsolicited, boring after-dinner confessions from one stranger to another that he was shocked – shocked, or in some way threatened – when he heard Rose respond to this confidence in terms not of polite sympathy but of familiarity and affection. He did not know why he had supposed these women strangers to one another, but when he heard Rose speak – and what she said was ‘But Maisie, you poor thing, you shouldn’t put up with it, you should have rung me, you know –’ he was shocked, as though his judgement were being judged, for one or both of these women he had maligned, they were friends, or at least concerned for one another, and he did not know whether he had to condemn himself for his judgement of the woman called Maisie, or whether to condemn Rose Vassiliou herself for the hopeless easy promiscuity of her sympathies, for her tone of genuine understanding, which must be assumed, which could not be real, or if real, how much more harshly was he himself excluded, to how dry a world was he more rigorously condemned by his own condemnations. They were friends, these two unlikely women: friends, interested in one another’s affairs. He hated them both for it. He ached, he turned away. He had no affairs that could bear the violence of discussion, none that he could expose to the bright light of sympathy. He ached with loneliness. It was a good transition. Loneliness, dreadful enough, was in every way preferable to hatred. He envied those women their conversation and their sorrows. He envied them, he liked them for liking each other. He turned away, and talked to Nick about the new board room dramas in ITV.

  Diana, her duties as a provider of food over, sat down in a corner of the settee and started to worry about how to get rid of her guests. Maisie was the only person likely to stay for ever, but as she lived more or less next door to the Wilsons she could surely pack her off with them in their car – what a mercy it was that Maisie had given up driving after that accident, when she drove herself she used to make a habit of sitting about until three in the morning waiting to get sober, under the impression that she was thereby relieving her hosts of a great anxiety – and Julian could probably be relied upon to leave quite promptly as she had heard him say to Nick that he had to fly to Frankfurt in the morning. It was only at this stage in the evening, however, that she really began to face the problem of what to do with Rose. Rose was mad, there was no doubt about it. There was no reason, of course, why one could not get a taxi for her, but it seemed so impolite, and also there was the money problem. The last time she had come Nick had driven her home, and Diana hadn’t liked that either, because he had done it with a little too good a grace. She had, now, to admit to herself that she had expected Simon would drive her home: it had seemed all right, last week, as a concept: but as the reality of it drew nearer it really did seem rather an imposition, to ask him to go miles out of his way. Most men it is true would probably quite like a chance to drive Rose home, but Simon was not like most men, and she found it quite impossible to tell whether he had taken to Rose or not: but hell, so what, at least one could always rely on him to be polite and do the right thing, she might just as well consign him to five miles of extra journey or whatever it was, as there was no other way out. He looked dreadful tonight, did Simon: as incapable of enjoying himself without Julie as he was incapable with her. She wondered whether he knew how miserable he looked – how offensively bored. She found time, now, to worry about him a little – though it was pointless, worrying about someone like him, he would never tell one anything, in a way she rather resented the real obduracy of his silence. Why didn’t he forget about it one day and just complain? Everyone else did. But even to Nick, Nick said, he didn’t complain. It was annoying of him, this discretion, it was inhuman, it even made one suspect from time to time that after all he hadn’t got any feelings, that he was not so much suffering (which would be understandable and vaguely pleasing) as insensitive (which would have reflected no credit upon anyone). And then, as if to counteract such a suspicion, he would give one of those anguished glances, or crack one of those very slightly bitter jokes, or make one of those generalized but savage remarks about the futility of progress or the turpitude of mankind, and she would know again where she was, happy again, for she found such remarks (she didn’t quite know why) exhilarating. She took such remarks, such glances, as signs of vulnerability, as appeals, and she prided herself on her sensitivity to them. She liked, passionately, to be liked, to be thought worthy of confidence, and having despaired of any more intimate confessions she was happy to accept such moments of emotion as came her way: guessing (correctly?) that such was his only method of communication, that no others were more honoured or more favoured than she, and that she herself, because more awake to him, because more awake to people altogether, saw more than most.

  She was tired. She was beginning to think it was time that people left, but they were all talking about Germany, a subject that did not interest her at all. It did not interest Maisie, either, she could see, for Maisie had gone unnaturally quiet and was starting to heave restlessly in the depths of her chair. The men, of course, were absorbed in the topic: she often wondered what satisfaction they found in exchanging such dry pieces of information, such probably inaccurate platitudes. Gwenda, of course, was rigid with attention, with the effort to show that she was taking an intelligent interest, and really she wasn’t holding her own too badly: although a glaze of boredom had covered her eyes, she was still managing to ask apposite questions, and even at one point was able to volunteer a small fact. Rose was listening, simply listening, she too looked tired, but she was too well bred (quite literally so, thought Diana with great satisfaction at the thought) to fidget or sigh. I will offer her another drink, thought Diana, but didn’t, because she knew that any move on her part at this juncture would be interpreted as a signal for departure, and although she was exhausted and longing for them to go, she needed them too much to want to stay to be able to take any steps to precipitate their going. They would leave, in the end, of their own accord, she only had to sit and wait: so she sat and waited, and in the end the Wilsons said they must get back to their baby-sitter, and everyone started to struggle to their feet – and amazingly enough, now the note of reprieve had sounded, she suddenly found herself anxious to retain them, to retain at least some of them (though it was with relief that she heard someone offer and Maisie accept a lift) – because she could not bear to think of them all going away, their separate ways, and discussing with one another as they went her cooking, her house, her dress, her marital problems, and leaving her out of these discussions, leaving her with the cigarette ends and the unwashed dishes, leaving her, quite simply, because they had had enough of her and wanted to go home. So she started, hopefully, to offer more drinks, but it was too late, they were all determined upon departure, except Rose, who sat quite still in her chair, evidently not knowing how to set about leaving. Simon was on his feet, and she wondered, as she received the Wilsons’ thanks, whether she should say anything to him about giving Rose a lift, but luckily she did not have to, because she saw that he had noticed the situation, that he was waiting to offer, politely, as she had always known he would. And when the others had all gone, there he still was, looking anxious and obliging. ‘Are you sure you won’t have another drink?’ she said to Rose, thinking that perhaps after all she might detain these two for a little while, but Rose shook her head and smiled and said that no, she really ought to be going, she didn’t like to be out too late because one of the children was always waking in the night and she ought to be there in case. And Simon, hearing this, said, let me drive you home, and Rose said of course not, she wou
ld get a taxi, and Simon said that it would be no trouble, and Rose said that it was miles and miles away, but she was looking so tired that it was clear that at the next offer she would accept, as indeed she did. So she had to relinquish them, though they stayed for a few moments to talk to Nick, who had come upstairs again from seeing the others off at the door: and then they departed together, as she had arranged, and left her feeling obscurely cheated.

  She went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water, as she was dying of thirst – perhaps everyone had been dying of thirst, perhaps that was why they had all gone home, to get themselves from their own taps the drinks of water which she had not thought of offering. And as she stood there, gazing into the debris in the sink, a wave of panic filled her: so pointless it was, such an evening, such a stupid life she led, such stupid frivolous aspirations, and they had all gone away and left her, her part was finished, she would drop from their minds as casually as a leaf from a tree, as naturally unregretted, having played her part, having fulfilled her role, she would drop from their minds as from this story, having accomplished nothing, set nothing in motion – or if something had been set in motion, how terrifying, how alarming, she was not able to cope with consequences, she did not like to think that anything would happen, nor that nothing would happen. What was it for, she asked herself, as she rinsed out the clean watery glass, what was it for, and why would she do it again the week after next?

  In the car, driving northward, Simon wondered silently to himself if he should make conversation. She looked tired, this woman, perhaps she did not want to talk. Perhaps, on the other hand, she did. How could one possibly tell? It would not have crossed his mind to resolve the problem by speaking because he himself preferred to speak, by maintaining silence because he himself preferred silence. He had never known such elementary simplicity, it was so alien to him that he could not even conceive of it in others, though he had from time to time, with faint astonishment, observed its existence. He imagined to himself, in his embarrassment, that her mind must too be occupied embarrassingly with the same preoccupation, and he hated the proximity of two anxious people in so small a space. So that when, finally, after five minutes or so, she spoke, the sound of her voice took him aback no less than her words. She sounded as though she had been thinking, not of something or anything to say, but of how to say exactly what she now came out with. With deliberation she said, as though she had been working on it in those five minutes:

  ‘You’re a lawyer, you said? A barrister?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She sighed, heavily, and then said, ‘What I need is a lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’d be able to help you,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose industrial law would be of much use to you.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said, vaguely, pursuing her own thoughts. ‘No, not exactly.’ And then she said, recklessly, horribly, as though throwing herself off a height, or upon his stony mercy, ‘I had a letter today from my solicitor. About the children. My husband says he wants them back. And another one from him, half an hour later. He says he’s going to make them wards-of-court.’

  ‘To make them what?’ he said, hardly able to believe that he had heard aright.

  ‘Wards-of-court,’ she repeated. And as she said no more, he was left to comment.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he said, inadequately. And then, more helpfully, ‘It can’t be serious, it must be some kind of threat.’

  ‘That’s what I try to tell myself,’ she said. ‘But it might be serious, after all. You don’t know my husband. The kind of things he does.’

  This was so evidently true that he did not think himself equipped to comment. So there was silence again, until she continued.

  ‘The letters were sent round,’ she said, ‘by messenger. Which made it seem serious. And also urgent. But I haven’t done anything. I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘it was just an impulse?’

  ‘It probably was,’ she agreed. ‘But you have no idea how he persists in his impulses. Once he has had one he is so loyal to it, it is quite terrifying. Once these things have been set in motion there is no stopping them. They go on and on, and everything is quite caught up in the process.’

  ‘A lot of people,’ he said, without much faith, ‘make gestures. Start things they have no intention of finishing. They threaten something they have no wish whatsoever to do. Or so I have often found.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know some people are like that. But we have never been like that, we have always pursued everything to the bitter end. It’s something about the law, it makes it so hard to stop once one has started. I sometimes fear …’ – and her voice, which had up to this point been remarkably steady, began now to thicken and dampen – ‘I sometimes fear that we have gone too far ever to restrain ourselves from anything. For him, every threat becomes immediately a reality. There seems to him no point in not doing anything. He is not reasonable.’ She began to cry. ‘I am afraid,’ she said, ‘that he actually likes it now. The solicitors. The letters. The publicity. He is determined to win, in the end. Oh dear, oh help, I am so sorry to cry like this, I feel so sorry for you, I knew I was going to do this to you the moment you offered me a lift home, in fact quite considerably before because it was obvious much earlier that you were going to have to offer me a lift, and there I sat knowing that the moment I got away from Nick’s I’d start to cry all over the place. I can’t help it, I always tell everybody everything, it’s a terrible habit, it really is.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘You probably do mind,’ she said, ‘but you’re too polite to say so and I quite frankly am too miserable to care.’

  She blew her nose, and looked at him, the tears pouring down her cheeks quite copiously. ‘Well, no,’ she said, amending her last statement as she briefly met his eye, ‘I’m not too miserable to care, but I’m too miserable to stop. And I really am sorry. But I must tell somebody, I had to tell somebody, and I couldn’t there, with all those people there.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said again, foolishly, but this time she took him up on it, saying almost eagerly, as though it were some rare generosity that had prompted him, ‘Don’t you really? That is so kind of you.’

  Then there was a silence: she was still weeping, and in fact her sobs seemed to be gathering momentum, not slackening, so he said, a little late perhaps, as though he had sensed at once, though dimly, the length, if not the sorrow or delights of what lay ahead, knowing as he sat there that he must give himself over to it, that he must allow it to happen, this quite accidental connection – he said, ‘You’d better tell me all about it.’

  ‘Would you mind very much if I did? Perhaps we could wait until we got back and then I could show you the letter and you can tell me what you think of it.’

  ‘That would seem a sensible thing to do,’ he said. ‘And now please do stop crying, it is beginning to make me feel quite dreadful.’

  ‘Is it really? I am sorry. Have a cigarette.’ She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of Woodbines, an offering from which he would in any other circumstances have withdrawn, but as it was he took one. She watched the trembling of his hand as he lit it.

  ‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘perhaps I could begin to tell you about it now, as I have made it quite impossible to talk about anything else.’

  ‘If you would like to.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘At the beginning?’

  ‘How could one possibly remember the beginning? It seems to have been going on for ever, I seem to have been struggling through legal nightmares all my life, first that awful business when I wanted to marry him, and then the divorce, and the rows about the money, and then this business. I can’t face any more of it. I’ll have to get another solicitor, I could never look mine in the face again. Perhaps you can recommend me a solicitor. Oh hell, I’ve completely finished off this handkerc
hief, you haven’t got a Kleenex or anything have you?’