A Talent For Destruction Page 12

  She found Alec Reynolds pleasant and sympathetic, the kind of person she’d hoped for as a friend, someone with whom she might eventually be able to discuss her difficulties. She had assumed that any friends she made would be women, but she could see no objection to befriending a man as long as she was open about it, and invited him home as soon as possible so that her husband could get to know him too. Robin might protest about having his privacy disturbed, but she was sure that he would find it as liberating as she did to be able to talk to someone who had no connection with Breckham Market, or with clerical life.

  For a woman who had been married for so long, Gillian Ainger knew dangerously little about her husband.

  Minutes later, she made a second friend.

  Reynolds had left her to make a promised telephone call to Lesley, and Gillian was about to talk to one of the other sculptors when a tall young man, with a voice as harsh as a kookaburra, lurched sideways and bumped against her, spilling beer on her coat.

  He didn’t seem to notice, but a vividly red-haired girl who was near him came immediately to Gillian’s rescue, trying to brush off the wetness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her accent was slighter and softer than the man’s, but identifiably Australian. ‘I really am sorry.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry, the coat will take no harm.’

  ‘Can I get you a drink, to compensate?’ The girl glanced disparagingly at the lanky, loose-jawed man who was regaling some Suffolk youths with an Antipodean dirty story. ‘I’ll persuade Athol to pay, of course, but I’m afraid it’s no use hoping he‘ll make the offer. What will you have?’

  ‘Thank you, but I won’t. I really was just leaving.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ The girl seemed distressed. Her eyes, set wide in her delicately boned face, were big with hurt. ‘Don’t turn me down. I couldn’t bear it if you went away thinking that all Australians are uncouth. Some of us are quite civilized, if only you’ll give us a chance to show it. My name’s Janey Rolph, by the way.’

  Her striking looks had turned nearly every male head in the bar, but she seemed totally unconscious of the interest she created. All her attention was focused on Gillian who, too kind-hearted to snub her, introduced herself and accepted another bitter lemon.

  ‘I really mustn’t stay long, though,’ said Gillian. ‘I live in a market town half an hour’s drive away, and I didn’t tell my husband I’d be late.’

  ‘I was brought up in a small town too, not far – well, seventy miles – from Brisbane,’ said Janey. ‘Would you believe Birmingham, population just over a thousand? It’s Athol Garrity’s home town as well. I’ve been over here eighteen months, post-grad at the U. Athol’s backpacking round Europe, and he turned up in Yarchester a couple of weeks ago looking for floor space for his bedroll. I couldn’t refuse, and now it’s difficult to get rid of him. He’s really embarrassing. Here am I trying to live down the crude Australian image, while he’s doing his best to reinforce it.’

  ‘And are you enjoying the university?’ asked Gillian. ‘How’s the research going?’

  The girl’s mouth took a wry downturn. ‘Slowly. Working for an M. Phil. is an isolating experience. That’s why I was quite glad to see Athol again, for the first fifteen minutes anyway. Apart from a discussion with my supervisor twice a term, I’m entirely on my own. That can be very depressing, especially in winter. I hate your winters. Low grey skies give me claustrophobia.’

  Janey shuddered. For a moment she looked fragile with cold and loneliness and homesickness, but then she made an effort to be positive. ‘Now that winter’s over, though, I’m beginning to feel better. You can’t imagine what a revelation my first English spring, last year, was. Spring in Australia comes overnight, somewhere in the middle of October. Most of our trees are evergreen, you see. This slow unfolding of greenery and blossom in April and May is incredibly beautiful. I’ve been reading English literature all my life, but until last year I had no idea what your poets were going on about when they wrote in praise of spring.’

  Gillian was surprised and touched to hear of such deprivation. She recommended the pastoral beauty of the Suffolk countryside round Breckham Market, adding, ‘My husband’s the Rector there. If ever you come out that way, you must call.’

  She had never seen anyone’s face so much transformed by such a simple invitation. Janey was joyful. ‘May I? Do you really mean it? Oh, beaut! I live in one of the student residences, and I’ve never yet been in an English home.’

  ‘Good heavens, haven’t you?’ Gillian was shocked by the thought of the isolation the girl must have endured. Despite her disenchantment with the parish, she had not entirely lost the impulse to spread loving-kindness, and so she plunged on without hesitation: ‘Then of course you must come! Do ring me, and we’ll arrange something.’ She scribbled her address and telephone number on the notepad that she carried in her handbag, tore off the sheet and gave it to Janey.

  Then she checked, hearing Athol Garrity’s raucous voice behind her. She didn’t move in circles where obscenities were accepted in conversation, and she had no intention of extending her hospitality to anyone who used them so freely.

  The girl, watching her, understood. ‘Don’t worry,’ Janey reassured her. ‘I’d love to come and visit you, but I certainly won’t bring Athol with me. He’s the last person I’d want to have around.’

  Gillian assumed that it was natural delicacy that made Janey want to keep Athol away from Breckham Market Rectory, but Janey’s reasons were quite different.

  For all his boorishness, there wasn’t a scrap of harm in Athol Garrity. He behaved with overweening masculinity because that was the social norm in Birmingham, Queensland, but he was as predictable and as relatively innocuous as a can of Fosters. Too many beers, whether Fosters or Watneys, made him loutish; but he was never cunning or violent. He had no hidden depths.

  But Janey Rolph had, and Athol knew it. He knew more about her background than Janey wanted anyone outside her home town to discover. Everyone in Birmingham, Queensland, knew that Janey’s father, as a young man, had driven his car to the edge of the outback, abandoned it, disappeared for three weeks, and had then emerged, bearded and unrecognized, to join in the search for himself. Everyone knew that Janey, as a small child, had watched her paternal grandmother chase her grandfather round the yard with a carving-knife. Everyone knew that Janey’s mother, before finally leaving her husband, had made more than one attempt to take her own life.

  What no one could be sure of was the effect that this background had had on Janey. She was attractive, she was charming, she was brilliantly clever; she was also potentially dangerous. Everyone who met her liked her, but anyone who knew the instability on both sides of her family would be wary of becoming too closely involved with her. Athol Garrity was one of many men who were fascinated by her, but the only one outside Queensland who knew better than to trust her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alec Reynolds went to supper at Breckham Market Rectory on the following Monday evening. The occasion was not a success.

  Robin had been stiff with hurt and rising panic when Gillian suggested it. He had suspected that something like this was in the air, from the moment when she returned from her class more than an hour late, looking happier and more animated than for a very long time. He had no doubt what had caused the change. She must have found someone else. He was going to lose her.

  Fear and anger made him lash at her with his voice. ‘It isn’t appropriate for a married woman – particularly for a clergyman’s wife – to make friends with another man.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I want to bring him home. I hope he’ll become your friend too. And you needn’t imagine,’ she added with an unusual flash of spirit, ‘that he has any designs on me, because he made a point of telling me that he has a woman friend he’s hoping to marry. So you’ve no need to suspect his motives in our friendship, any more than mine.’

  They had stood glaring at each other, Gillian guilty with new-foun
d defiance, Robin furious with mistrust, both of them aware of the way the ground was crumbling beneath their feet.

  ‘I shall see him in Yarchester when I go to my classes, anyway,’ pointed out Gillian. ‘If you prefer me to do that –’

  ‘Bring him, then, if you must,’ he had snarled. ‘Just don’t expect me to welcome him, that’s all!’

  She should have had more sense, after that, she thought wryly, listening while her husband systematically quashed Alec’s affable attempts at conversation, than to persist. On the other hand, she had never imagined that Robin could be so deliberately rude. Treating their guest as some kind of challenger, her husband was using all the weapons he could lay tongue to in an attempt to cut down Reynold’s size. He was more tense than his wife had ever seen him. The muscles of his face tightened the skin so that it shone where the light caught it, and his pale blue eyes had a disturbingly unfocused gleam.

  Gillian herself was so anxious about the relationship the men were failing to establish that she was unable to control the conversation. Her father tried to help, but his contribution was unattractive.

  ‘A very nice bit o’chicken, dear,’ he said to his daughter. He fingernailed a shred of meat from between two teeth. ‘When I was at Gallipoli in 1915 –’ he began; he had spent only three days on the peninsula, at the age of eighteen, but he relived some part of the searing experience every day for the rest of his life, ‘– all we had to eat was bully beef. Rum ol’grub, in that climate in August. The ground was hot enough to scorch the soles o’your feet through your boots, and the bully beef was runny in the tins. More like soup. Half o’the battalion went down with dysentery –’

  Understandably, Alec Reynolds refused to stay for coffee. Gillian walked dejectedly with him to his car, which he had parked in the drive. The clocks had recently changed, gaining an extra hour for summer time, and although the evening was still winter-cold there were pink bars of light in the sky behind the copper beech trees at the top of Parson’s Close.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alec,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have invited you – I wouldn’t have, if I’d known he’d be like this.’

  Reynolds took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. The atmosphere in the dining room, and the effort of remaining courteous, had made him sweat and smudged his lenses. Without them, he looked considerably less mild.

  In fact he was blisteringly angry with Ainger for his rudeness, and vexed with Gillian for her naivety. He had accepted her invitation in good faith, expecting to spend a pleasant social evening with just such a relaxed and hospitable couple as he and Sylvia had been. But five minutes with the Aingers was enough to show him the direction and strength of Robin’s emotions, and he was astonished that Gillian hadn’t anticipated her husband’s likely reaction. He put his glasses on again and opened the car door, anxious not to add to Ainger’s suspicions by lingering too long.

  ‘Surely you know that you’re married to a very possessive man?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you realize that you were asking for trouble by bringing another man home?’

  ‘But that’s juvenile!’ she protested. ‘It’s uncivilized. Robin knows perfectly well that I love him. It’s completely irrational of him to be upset.’

  ‘My dear, reason doesn’t come into it. Your husband can’t help being possessive, any more than your father can help being old. You’ll never change him, and it’s risky to try. Thank you for inviting me tonight, but it’ll be in your best interests not to ask me here again.’

  And not only in Gillian’s interests, he thought. He had longed all evening to knock her husband down. He had never struck anyone in his adult life, but living alone had taught him that he was capable of lashing out. Although he had sat in the Rectory dining-room turning the other cheek in a civilized fashion, under the table his fists had been tightly clenched.

  He had held back for Gillian’s – for Sylvia’s – sake, of course. He was able to hold back, because he had plenty of self-control as long as he was sober. But there was another consideration: prudence.

  Reynolds was not at all sure how far his host’s self-control extended. Difficult to tell, when he had not met the man before; difficult to assess, when the atmosphere was as highly charged with emotion as a circuit with electricity. But the strange, staring look in those eyes had alarmed Reynolds sufficiently to make him reluctant to tangle in any way with Robin Ainger.

  He said a hasty good-bye to Gillian, backed out of the Rectory drive, and headed, thankfully for once, for his empty house.

  From behind the half-drawn curtains of the darkened Rectory dining-room, Robin Ainger’s pale eyes watched him go.

  For the next hour or two the Aingers hardly spoke to one another.

  Robin retreated to his study and sat at his desk with his head in his hands, raging silently over what he saw as Gillian’s infidelity. She had not fallen in love with Reynolds – having seen them together, he realized that – nor Reynolds with her; but instead of easing his tension, this knowledge increased it.

  Love, to Robin, was a passion that was total. Had his wife and Reynolds fallen in love, it would have seemed to him understandable; completely unforgivable, but at least involuntary. But he saw this easy friendship between his wife and another man, their ready conversation, the platonic pleasure that they evidently derived from each other’s company, as a deliberate betrayal. If Gillian could do this to him, cynically repudiating what he saw as the totally exclusive nature of the marriage-bond, then she no longer loved him. He might not have lost her to Reynolds, but he had lost her in a way that was infinitely more destructive of his self-esteem.

  Gillian, having washed up, stayed in the kitchen. She was furious with Robin for his rudeness, cross with herself for her inability to stand up to him, ashamed of the impression they had made on their guest. At the same time she was worried about Robin, anxious for his health because she knew that he was under stress, and guilty because she knew that she was contributing to his problems. But she had inherited from her father not only his lack of subtlety but also some of his peasant stubbornness. She was determined to persist with her classes in Yarchester and her new friendships, because she found it impossible to believe that Robin wouldn’t soon get over his possessiveness and start to behave more sensibly.

  But Robin, locked in his study, had been overwhelmed by the enormity of his wife’s behaviour, and the desolation of losing her. He had put his head down on his desk and had begun to thump the side of his fist against the edge of the wood, rhythmically, viciously, until the skin broke and spots of blood flicked on to the pages of last night’s sermon.

  Soon after ten o’clock, Gillian heard his footfall in the tiled hall, and the creak of the downstairs cloakroom door. When he emerged, she called to him that she had just made coffee.

  Robin followed his wife slowly into the kitchen. His face was pale and he smelled of antiseptic lotion. His damaged hand, wrapped in a handkerchief, was tucked into his trouser pocket. He took the mug she offered, mumbled an acknowledgement and, keeping his eyes averted from her, turned to walk away.

  ‘Robin –’

  He stood still with his back to her.

  ‘Surely we can talk?’

  ‘What is there to say?’

  ‘You were rude to our guest, and spoiled my supper party. You could at least apologize.’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it. Is the spare bed made up?’

  She was jolted. In the whole of their married life they had never not shared their double bed. ‘Oh – but –’

  He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. A couple of blankets will do.’

  He followed her up the stairs. She went slowly, head down, feeling wretchedly confused. She hadn’t bargained for such a rift. But perhaps Alec was right, perhaps Robin couldn’t help himself. And however badly he behaved, she still loved him.

  In the upstairs corridor she turned to him, lifting her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was my fault, I should have known better than to invite him he
re. He means absolutely nothing to me, and I won’t ask him again.’

  Robin tried to focus his eyes on her, for the first time that evening. ‘Really?’ he asked with painful slowness.

  ‘Really.’ She lifted her hands and rested the palms lightly on his chest, close to the base of his throat. This was her accustomed prelude to offering him a kiss. After a moment, he bent his head and brushed his dry lips against her forehead. She could feel the too-rapid beat of his heart, the quiver of his chest against her hands, but his sketch of a kiss had reassured her.

  ‘Really and truly,’ she repeated, almost with gaiety. ‘I’m certainly not going to quarrel with you over a friend.’

  In her vocabulary, the word was completely innocuous. She had no idea why he stiffened and pulled away from her. ‘Are you going to give up going to those classes?’ he demanded in a tight voice.

  ‘No, of course not. Not until they finish in May.’

  ‘So you’ll still see Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes, at the classes. But good heavens –’

  Her husband pushed her blindly aside, descended the stairs and began to drag on his coat. All his motions were exaggerated, as though he were sleepwalking. The handkerchief binding fell away from his hand, but he failed to notice.

  Gillian ran down the stairs after him. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Do you care?’ he spat, without looking at her. His face was a stranger’s, older, uglier, the skin coarse and grey as lead. ‘No, you don’t, so don’t lie to me. If you did care, you wouldn’t go on hurting me like this.’

  He went out of the door and slammed it behind him. A minute later she heard their car start up. He gunned the engine, she heard the squeal of rubber as he slewed the car out of the gates, and then he was off, shattering the quiet of St Botolph Street, driving as though all the devils in hell were at his shoulder.