“Oh, of course we have,” Sylvia said. “Colin, do you have to embarrass me?”
The phone rang in the living room. Karen answered it.
“Mum, it’s for you, it’s Meals on Wheels.”
“All right, I’m coming.”
“Try this,” Claire demanded, blocking her path and proffering a teacup. “Excellent, very good, or good?”
“I’m going to the phone, Claire. Give it to your father.” Sidestepping her daughter, she gave Francis a sidelong glance as she left the room.
“Francis, you’re an intelligent man,” said Colin.
“Yes?” said Francis guardedly.
“I have to ask you something. No, not now, Claire, put it down. Do you believe in coincidence?”
“Coincidence?” The vicar took his pipe out and sucked it. “Funny you should ask me that.”
Colin understood that the vicar had made a joke. A forced tremulous smile was his response. “No, but really?”
“I say, this is jolly good,” said the vicar, tasting Claire’s tea. “Of course I believe in it. Otherwise, when you were out on the street, you’d never see the same chap twice, would you?”
“Yes, well, that’s coincidence at its most basic level—”
“Oh, very basic,” the vicar agreed. “I say, what do I do now, fill in this mark sheet?”
“But I think I mean coincidence as a force, as an organising principle if you like, as an alternative set of laws to the ones we usually go by.”
“Oh, Jung,” said the vicar. “Where’s a pencil? I see, so I put this little tick in here…Synchronicity, eh? The old acausal connecting principle. Arthur Koestler, old J. W. Dunne.
“Yes, I know all that. But what do you think of it?”
“Murky waters,” said the vicar. He took his pipe out of his mouth and indicated with it; Hermione did not allow him tobacco. “Look here, let’s pinpoint this, Colin. What exactly is it that you’re asking me?”
“I don’t know. Please, Claire, no more tea. My life seems to be falling apart, or rather—well, reorganising itself on some new principle entirely.”
“For instance?”
“Oh, you know how it is. You have hopes, they’re disappointed. You put the past behind you, find a modus vivendi. Suddenly it’s under threat. The past seems to be the present. I look at the faces about me, some familiar, some not so familiar, and I imagine I can see echoes—shadows, I suppose you’d say—of other faces. The air seems to be full of allusions. I look at people and I imagine them to be thinking all sorts of things. I don’t know whether it’s reasonable or not.”
“I wish you could give me a more concrete example.”
“Cup number 27,” said Claire. “The milk’s smelling a bit funny again, never mind.”
“Well, all this about my mother…it’s as if she’s come back from the dead. It’s so unnatural to see somebody sit up like that and speak for the first time in years…it’s deeply sinister, it’s predictive, that’s what I feel.”
“Predictive of what?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did know, if I knew I could prepare us for it. Our lives have been quite calm, all considered, for the past ten years, as calm as they can ever be when there’s a young family growing up…. But now there’s something hanging over us.”
The vicar smiled; comfortable little pads, like hassocks, appeared beneath his chilly eyes. “Oh, come now, Colin. A touch melodramatic, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Things happen…they seem to have meaning, but they don’t. A while ago I was mowing the front lawn. It was a lovely day. I was enjoying myself. Suddenly there was a set of teeth staring up at me.”
“Teeth,” the vicar said. “Human teeth, Colin?”
“Yes, human teeth. Claire, I can’t drink this. The milk’s off.”
Claire burst into tears. “You’re supposed to put down for the tea, not the milk. How can I get to fifty cups if nobody will drink it?”
The vicar said, “I’m afraid it sounds like a classic case of…something unpleasant.”
“I’m glad you agree,” Colin said.
“So have you thought of, you know, seeing someone? A chap?”
Suzanne phoned up Jim’s house. Her heart fluttered wildly when she heard the ringing tone. There was a dull pain in the pit of her stomach, her throat was closed and aching. She wrapped her hand so tightly round the receiver that the nails turned white. All day she had been steeling herself to make the call. Again and again she had pictured it, rehearsed it in her mind. To make it easier for herself she had invented some superstitions and pegged them around her fear. I shall let it ring twenty times, and if after twenty times she does not answer I will be reprieved, and I can put the phone down with a clearer mind because it will be a signal that ringing her was not the right thing to do.
Between ring twelve and ring thirteen, the baby has grown a little, added a few cells to the person it will be. She sees herself relaxing her grip, replacing the receiver, walking away and out of the room to climb the stairs and lie on her bed. She closes her eyes. At the nineteenth ring, the phone is answered.
