Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

He made me roll over on to my stomach and, miraculously, I began to feel clean. He sponged under my arms. ‘If you need more padding, I’ll tear up a shirt.’

He washed me clean and then he kissed me. Weak, frightened and desperate with love, I returned the kiss, but it was a Judas kiss.

A week later, we flew back to Quetzl in the alarming plane and checked into the hotel by the airport.

During the night, I told Hal that I was leaving him, because I loved him, loved him so much that I could not bear us to destroy each other. ‘I want peace, stability, a family,’ I told him. ‘Sooner or later the issues would have had to be dealt with, and we might as well get it over and done with.’

Hal was facing me on the pillow and he turned away. He said nothing to change my mind. I had known he wouldn’t. He sighed and I tugged at his shoulder to make him turn back. With a shock, I saw that he was crying. ‘I don’t want what you have described,’ he said, ‘but that makes it even harder.’

In the hotel room the next morning, I woke late. Hot sun slatted into the room and the cheap bed-covering was rough and grimy.

Hal and his rucksack had vanished.

I lay and pictured him walking through the close, crowded streets, stopping for a coffee to clear his head, or to sift through his fingers a pinch of a bright-coloured spice on a stall. Already he would be rebuilding the present, talking of the future, anticipating the journey back into the rainforest. He and I knew that he had been released from years of compromise, disagreement, the spectre of me waiting.

On the way to the airport I asked the taxi driver to stop. I got out of the car. The heat blasted me like a drill, and the noise and smells slapped my senses. The sky was a vicious, burning, gun-metal grey. Lining the sides of the road were piles of rubbish, figures picking through them, digging with bare hands.

I walked to the nearest and placed my boots on it. Before two seconds had elapsed, someone darted down the heap and seized them.

I got back into the taxi. The town’s straggle slipped away, to be replaced by fields and scrub. I did not look back.

Early on in our affair, Hal had lectured me that everyone must travel for it widened the horizon. Uncritical with love, I agreed.

He had been wrong, and how surprised he would have been to be told that. Travel narrowed the horizon. (I think Bernard Shaw wrote that.)

On the flight home, I met Nathan.

Nathan had been fascinated by the story. ‘Why,’ he wanted to know, ‘if you loved the wretched man, did you leave him?’

I tried to explain about not having the courage to face dead bodies in the jungle or, rather, what they represented. Neither did I wish to be the one who waited at home. I didn’t tell him that I loved Hal so much that, in the end, I did not trust that love.

‘But nothing would stop me marrying you,’ Nathan plunged his hands into his pockets, ‘now that I’ve met you. I wouldn’t care if you lived up a tree.’

‘Perhaps I haven’t explained well enough,’ I said, and I probably had not, for the subject was unbearably painful to me and muddled.

If Vee or Mazarine had asked me how it felt to meet Hal again, I think I would have replied, ‘Inevitable.’

In one sense Nathan had been right, but not in the way he had feared. Once acquired, the habit of someone does not go away entirely. It goes underground. You may not see them again, or you may, but they are there in situ.

The days were rolling by, and summer was now well advanced. I was still not sleeping well although I was not unhappy, just restless from the aftermath of a great battle to survive that had been waged in me. One hot night I pushed open the french windows and stepped into the mysterious night world of the city.

The air was like velvet, with just a hint of chill. A fox barked three or four gardens up the terrace, and stopped when it scented me. Leaving a tracing of my bare feet in the dew, I trod over the lawn. Cream and white roses glimmered like lamps through the watery dark. In the shadow, I could just make out the dark smudge of curved leaf scimitars and the lax sprawl of the plants.

I was bathed in sweat and my heart pounded, for I was remembering the excitement and strangeness of the rainforest. When I reached the fountain, I sat down on its brick lip. There was a tiny splash. In Parsley’s absence, a toad had taken up residence. I had seen it quite a few times. I do not know how long I sat there, but I must have been very still for the toad came creeping out of the water.

Would I have chosen differently in this small history of mine? I do not think so. Roses are such domesticated flowers, Ianthe always said. Remember that.

The light was growing stronger. I got up, stretched and sniffed with pleasure at the cool night scents.

Lily-beetle watch time. Best done in a nightdress, I found. The Madonnas grew in a group of three pots and I bent down to inspect their foliage. Lily beetles have an amazing capacity to multiply and they were there, tucked up, shiny-backed terrorists with jaws like steel intent on destroying the lily’s beauty.

I picked one up between finger and thumb. This one was young, glossy and greedy. A Minty of a beetle that could not help stealing and plundering because it knew no better. Squeamish gardeners are no use and, having been greenly indoctrinated, I did not use sprays. For the good of the world, I employed cruder methods. With only a tiny regret, I dropped the young, glossy, thieving lily beetle on to the stone and crushed it.

I searched for another.

Mazarine had been correct when she argued that we must experience pain, otherwise delight will never have its proper savour, nor pleasure its sweetness, nor love its bittersweet ache – which is what I had wanted from that love’s foreign convulsive grip.

But I had learnt not to confuse my experience with Hal with the everyday. Real life was different. It was home territory. Having skimmed off a layer of fantasy and yearning, I had been left free to light on moments of pleasure, happiness and affection sandwiched between the routines and the habits. No, looking back, I had sought and accepted the torment and the anguish of Hal in order to remember and store the tenderness, the profound joy, the awe at being so shaken by the exquisiteness of passion.

Of course, I had carried some of those memories, my knowledge, with me to Nathan. That was how it worked.

Meeting Hal again had reminded me.

Chapter Twenty

My energy returned. I cleaned Lakey Street from top to bottom. I went through my desk on the landing and threw out every bit of unnecessary paper. I climbed into the attic and sorted through a suitcase of my old clothes, scooping up the too-short skirt, the little knitted dress that had to be worn without a bra, the figure-hugging blouse – clothes that belonged to the past – carried them out to the car and drove them to the charity shop.

I even ventured into the garden with the intention of doing something and, after a few hours, an old pleasure reclaimed me. The rabbit-out-of-a-hat magic. I was at home here, and the rules did not change. It was too late in the season to do any serious repair work on the uncared-for plants but this was reassuring: ‘It’s good to know you’re needed,’ I informed Vee, ‘even if it is the garden.’

Vee groaned. ‘What I would do not to be needed?’

For twenty-five years high summer had meant Cornwall but not this one. Perhaps never again, because I could not see myself returning without Nathan.

The idea cast a shadow over my present tranquillity – and I was on my guard against shadows – so I phoned Sam and drove down to Bath for a weekend. Alice was away on a brainstorming conference so we took ourselves off into the country and walked. Sam endeavoured to explain his frustration and bewilderment at how little progress the affair was making.

After a while, it struck me that Sam still talked about Alice with an unhealthy reverence that I considered should have been levelling out by now. Alice’s abilities were, no doubt, awe-inspiring but not superhuman. Then I concluded that he was suffering from an overdose of tragic, courtly love, perhaps not so