Double Vision

Twenty-two

Stephen hadn’t expected Justine to come to the cottage that evening, but she did, late, tear-stained and miserable.

‘Dad and Angela are getting married,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said, after a second’s pause.

‘Good?’

‘It’s going to make it a lot easier for you to go away. You wouldn’t want to leave him on his own.’

‘No-o.’

Then the wails started. He hadn’t believed her capable of such uninhibited, childlike distress. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘Nobody loves me.’

‘Your father loves you.’ A bit late, lamely and lacking all conviction, he added, ‘I love you.’

She uncovered her face, and gave him a sharp look. She wasn’t so far gone that insincerity didn’t penetrate. ‘You don’t have to say it.’ Suddenly, she stopped crying, and said briskly, ‘My mother didn’t love me.’

‘I’m sure she did.’ But he cringed as he said it, aware of the pointlessness of pronouncing on the feelings of a woman he’d never met.

‘Not enough to stick around. You know, it’s difficult to expect other people to treat you decently when…’

‘No, I know.’ The darkness at the uncurtained windows pressed in on them. ‘And Peter can’t have helped.’

‘No. So OK, he was bad news, and he would’ve been for anybody, I don’t think it was just me, but I fell for him. I can’t help thinking somebody else mightn’t have done, not in the same way. I clutched at it.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop beating yourself up. He’s attractive, he’s charming, he’s good-looking. If it came to a pulling contest, he’d do a helluva lot better than Mark.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Though apparently not as well as my brother.’

‘You’re jealous.’

‘Too bloody right I’m jealous.’

How could he have got his own brother so wrong. But he couldn’t sort that out now. ‘Look, getting back to Peter, in ten years’ time you’re going to believe you had a bloody good screw and dumped him. You dumped him. So just press fast-forward and start believing it now.’

She was lying in his arms on the bed, looking through the open curtains at the moon drifting between high towers of cloud.

‘It isn’t as easy as that. And in any case you don’t mean it, you know you don’t.’ She sniffed, wiping tears away on the back of her hand. ‘Dad liked you, by the way.’

‘I can’t think why. He must know I’m married.’

‘I haven’t told him.’

‘He knows.’

‘Well, I am nineteen —’

‘More to the point, Mark liked you.’

‘Yes, I know. He asked me to go out with him.’

‘Before or after you yelled at him?’

‘After.’

‘Kinky sod. Will you go?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I didn’t think he was all that attractive. Perhaps as a friend…’

‘If he’s a possible friend, you should go. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s what he wants.’

‘He’s just finished doing Medicine at Cambridge.’

‘Well, then.’

‘You’re supposed to be jealous.’

‘I’ve no right to be jealous. Have I?’

She didn’t answer. After a few seconds, she rolled over and, in a tense silence, they tried to get to sleep.

He woke the following morning knowing before he opened his eyes that something was wrong. Looking into the mirror as he shaved, his expression was not that conspiratorial self-acceptance he’d found so attractive in Goya’s self-portrait. Far from it. He craned his head back, guiding the razor underneath his chin, and he didn’t like anything he saw.

He made coffee and then took his toast into the living room to watch the television news. Israeli tanks bombarding Jenin. An old woman in a headscarf crying in the ruins of her home. Justine, who seemed to have lost her appetite for fry-ups, peeled and ate an orange.

When the news was over, she said, ‘Dad says you were asking questions about Peter before lunch. Why?’

‘I wanted to hear what he’d say.’

‘He says you kept asking what Peter did.’

He didn’t answer.

‘Whatever it was, he’s been out five years and he hasn’t done it again.’

‘How do you know, if you don’t know what it was?’

‘You don’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt, do you?’

‘Not often.’

‘The truth is, you’ve been digging around in violence so long you can’t see anything else.’

‘I see you.’

‘Do you?’

Stephen sighed. This was a surprisingly married conversation to be having with a girlfriend. It had that intense acrimonious pointlessness that only comes from long years of cohabitation.

‘Why do you do it?’

‘What?’

She jerked her head at the girl who was talking to camera. ‘That. Be a war correspondent.’

‘Foreign.’ The distinction mattered. He was damned if he was going to call himself after an activity he despised.

‘You covered a helluva lot of wars.’

‘They were there to be covered. I didn’t start them.’

‘You know there’s a Barbara Vine book called A Dark Adapted Eye? That’s what you’ve got.’

‘Now you’re being silly.’

‘No, I’m not. People get into darkness, to the point where it’s the light that hurts.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Why did I do it? Adventure, proving myself, proving I could take it — and once that wore off, which it does, very quickly, being in the know. That sort of thing.’

She was looking at him scornfully.

‘Yeah, OK. I know — pathetic. But why do you think people become doctors? Pure altruism? I don’t think so.’

‘Why, then?’

‘Knowledge. Access to secrets. Power.’

‘Not the only reasons.’

‘There are plenty of good reasons for being a war correspondent. Witnessing. Giving people the raw material to make moral judgements.’

‘But you said yourself, the witness turns into an audience, and then you’re not witnessing any more, you’re disseminating.’

He’d forgotten he’d said that. ‘If you mean, “Was I damaged by it?” Yeah. I don’t think it’s inevitable, I can think of plenty of people who haven’t been, but, yeah, I think I was. Can it be repaired? Some of it. Probably not all of it, but that’s me —’ He turned to face her. ‘Imperfect, messed up, thoroughly unsatisfactory — and you’d better get used to it, sweetheart, because there’s a couple of million more of us out there.’

She stared directly into his eyes, the skin around her own eyes swollen from last night’s tears. ‘You’re getting tired of this, aren’t you?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What, then?’

‘I’ve always known it can’t last. I accept that. And whenever you go, I won’t try to hold you back. You will go with my blessing.’ That sounded cringe-makingly pompous, but it had to be said.

She nodded. A few minutes later, still silent, she started to get dressed.

At the door, as she was leaving, she said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Beth wants to see you.’

‘What about?’

A shrug, and she was gone.

He couldn’t guess what the summons to the farmhouse might be about. If it had anything to do with Justine, he was prepared to hit back. He no longer saw his brother’s wife as the fragile half-erased victim of Robert’s more forceful personality, but as somebody altogether more formidable. But she had no possible right to interfere. Locking the door, deciding that no, he didn’t need to wear a sweater for the quick walk up the lane, he planned what he would say: something about the advisability of taking care of her own family first. Adam was getting a bloody raw deal in this situation, and, if provoked, he was prepared to come right out and say so. At some level, anyway, she must know that.

He walked to the farmhouse along the narrow path that led between high hawthorn hedges bursting into leaf, passed the pond with its rutted edges, green goose shit everywhere, and the geese themselves hissing and swaying towards him. The back door was open. In the band of sunshine that fell across the stone-flagged floor, there were three pairs of wellingtons, standing side by side, two of them green, the other, smaller pair in navy-blue and red. Once, not so long ago, he’d have felt a twinge of envy.

Beth’s voice came drifting out to him. ‘In here.’

She was in the conservatory. None of the windows was open, and he felt the clammy heat slick his face with sweat before he reached her. She was standing in front of a long table filling pots with compost. There were blue hyacinths blooming in a bowl beside her, spiralling up towards the light. Her fingers were covered with soil. She wiped the sweat away from her upper lip with one freckled forearm and smiled at him.

‘Hello,’ he said, and stood waiting. When nothing, apart from the returned greeting, was forthcoming, he said, ‘What a marvellous colour.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? I like them so much better than the pink ones.’

He waited. She seemed to be finding this difficult.

‘Robert and I were wondering if you’d do something for us?’

‘Of course. Anything I can.’

‘It’s just that, you know we’ve been planning this little trip to Paris? It’s not long, just the three nights, but I’m a bit worried about leaving Justine here on her own. We’ve had a few silent calls, and… well, they’re always a little bit disturbing, aren’t they? You always think it might be burglars checking to see if you’re in…’

Or one of Robert’s girlfriends trying to reach Robert.

‘I mean, I know she’s nineteen and plenty of girls that age have their own children…’

‘Not ten-year-olds.’

‘No, that’s true. Anyway, we were wondering if you’d step into the breach, as it were.’

‘You mean live in?’ He was enjoying this.

‘Yes, I think it would have to be in. There are plenty of beds.’

‘And Justine would be…?’

‘She’d be here too. And of course she’d take care of Adam during the day, so you wouldn’t have to stop work. Only we’d be happier if you were here at night.’

‘Sounds all right to me. When?’

‘Next weekend. We thought Friday till Monday.’

‘Yes, fine. What brought this on?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was about to say something bland about the long winter, working too hard… ‘Things aren’t good,’ she seemed to surprise herself by saying.

‘Between you and Robert?’

An embarrassed nod, but then immediately she began to back off. A lot of it was just tiredness, Robert working all hours, she was doing a full-time job… ‘And this is a big place.’ She gazed round her with a hopeless expression, though the house was beautifully kept.

‘You’re obviously happy doing what you’re doing now. The garden…’

‘Yes, but —’

‘I suppose it’s a big place to run on one income.’

‘No, we could afford it, all right. The truth is I think if I were “just a housewife”…’ She was sketching inverted commas in the air as she spoke, but she meant it. ‘…Robert would get bored with me. Correction. Even more bored. You know he’s seeing somebody?’

Everybody, according to Justine. ‘No?’

‘I just wondered if he’d talked to you.’

She didn’t know, she was just guessing. ‘No, and I wouldn’t want him to.’ He hesitated, wishing he hadn’t started this conversation. ‘He won’t leave you.’

‘You mean he won’t leave Adam.’

That was exactly what he’d meant, but he could see she mightn’t find it encouraging. ‘Marriages go through all sorts of phases, Beth. The fact is you chose each other. And that says something about you which is probably still true.’

Stephen was feeling uncomfortable. His only qualification for advising on marriage was having made a mess of his own.

‘You know what I’d really like?’ she said, suddenly brightening. ‘A greenhouse. A big one, the kind they have in nurseries, not one of those fiddly little things. That’s what I really like — plants.’

‘Then go for it. You’re lucky to have a passion like that — most people don’t. And it’d fit in better with Adam.’

‘Oh, Adam’s all right.’

As if summoned, like the devil, by the mention of his name, Adam appeared in the doorway. Stephen turned to him. ‘You know what, Adam, I think it’s time we went and saw Archie again.’ One of the most successful days he and Justine and Adam had spent together had been at the Bird of Prey Centre. ‘If we’re very nice to Phil, he might let you fly him this time.’

Adam was beaming.

‘Who’s Archie?’ asked Beth.

‘An eagle owl,’ Adam said. ‘He’s huge, isn’t he, Stephen? Bigger than an eagle.’

‘And he’s in love with Phil, isn’t he?’

Adam giggled. ‘He keeps trying to mate with his glove. When can we go?’

‘Next weekend, when Mum and Dad are in Paris.’

‘Right,’ Adam said, and marched up the stairs, not looking back.

Stephen turned and found Beth looking at him with a rather wry expression. She said, ‘It’s very easy, you know, being an uncle.’

‘Oh, I’m sure. Uncles aren’t responsible for how they turn out.’