Secrets of the Heart

shinily nourished. A fish out of water? Automatically, she adjusted her expression into an acceptable one, reached for the towel and patted until the shine was dulled. Then she massaged cream into the base of her neck, where it was beginning to fold and thicken. A fragrant, feminine, highly constructed, accommodating Kitty took shape in the mirror.

That was better. The wild, panicking figure had been smoothed out of sight, and she recognized herself again.

Downstairs, she made breakfast and carried it into the conservatory. Later, she would make a picnic and wait on the shore for Julian to return from his sail. They would eat it tucked under the fossil cliff: good friends and companions with the memory of the fervent, burning, slow-motion sensation-seeking and -giving of the night still fresh.

After dinner, Kitty came into the study where Julian was wrestling with the Portcullis problems and shut the door.

He looked up. ‘When you look all pink, soft and gold like that,’ he said, ‘it usually means business. The Kitty paradox.’

‘It does.’ In a waft of scent, she trod across the carpet towards him in her high heels and stood over him. He put down his pen but did not meet her eye. He’s thinking I look older than last week, she thought, in sudden fear, and twisted the ruby and diamond ring he had given her round and round the finger on her right hand. He’s comparing me. ‘I know we’ve discussed this only quite recently but I want to talk about it again. I want to thrash it out.’ In the silence that fell, she felt a prickle run over her flesh. ‘Julian, please, I have some rights in this too. After all this time, I am entitled to make my demands.’

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet and she hoped, desperately, that it was to touch her. But he moved towards the window. ‘Do we need to go into this again, Kitty?’

‘I’ve had enough of being unsecured. I want an anchor. I can’t explain it very well. Oh… I don’t know. I would like to be invited to the social events in the area without being labelled the scarlet woman.’

He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘What on earth -’

She cut him off. ‘You wouldn’t understand because it isn’t your world, and you don’t think about anything except your own world, but it means a lot to me. Or it’s beginning to. It’s about belonging.’

He turned his face towards the sea. ‘The weather’s getting up,’ he remarked – he was cruel, so cruel – and the wind’s mutter could be heard through the window. It was a long time before he asked, ‘Do you want the truth, Kitty?’

Too late to scuttle back into harbour: she had launched her boat. Kitty searched Julian’s face for a clue, for a positive sign from which she could take heart, and found nothing worthy of interpretation. She summoned courage. ‘Yes. I do.’

He seemed to be making up his mind to say something. ‘Kitty… I think…’ Terrified, she gave an involuntary little cry. At the sound, he stopped, appeared to change his mind, and began again. ‘We’ve had ten years. Are you telling me you’ve had enough?’

She bit her lip. How like him to throw the question back. Always resisting confrontation. He was like a piece of galvanized iron, smooth and impervious, which over the years she had sought to pierce and never succeeded. ‘I don’t think you’re being honest. Is it…’ Kitty forced her mouth to stop trembling. ‘Is it… my age? You’d better say if it is.’

He flinched. ‘Kitty, do you think you should tear yourself apart like this?’ He looked straight at her. ‘If you want a change…’

And Kitty wished, wished, that she had never opened her mouth and, at the same time, she knew that it was impossible for her not to try to discover the truth. She longed to know how thin and insubstantial was the ground on which she stood but was terrified to look down. And yet she had come up against the limits of what she was prepared to suffer in silence. ‘Go on, Julian, we’d better get the age question out into the open.’

‘All right, your age might possibly have something to do with it.’

‘Why… why?’ She heard herself dart and jab like a stinging insect, a useless, irritating thing. ‘Tell me.’

He looked troubled. ‘Lately, I have considered the idea of children.’

‘How strange. How very strange. I never imagined that lack of children would ever be an issue between us. We were both… so set. We agreed…’ she gave a short laugh ‘… that we were always too self-absorbed.’

‘You were always adamant that you never wanted them.’

‘True.’ Kitty twisted her ring and fumbled for the advantage, the light of battle still not quite extinguished. ‘If – if you feel strongly, Julian, there are clinics and things that can sort things out.’

At last, he touched her. He slipped an arm around the doll-like waist and barely curving hips. Passionless and without curiosity, it was the gesture of a man who had been familiar with a body for a long time.

‘I think I have my answer. But…’ Kitty could not finish the sentence. She slipped from his grasp and left the room.

The door clicked shut.

Sunday.

He was finding it hard to look Kitty in the face, a trait he despised in others and particularly in himself. Kitty’s haunted eyes, which shuttered briefly at the moment of passion, only to open to tell him she loved him. He had grown to dread the scrape of their flesh as they willed a response from each other.

Nor did he want her exquisiteness, which she presented to him like an expensive gift. Or the Kitty of the pale blue jacket who waited on the roaring, spitting shore with a perfectly planned and packed picnic. Waiting for him. Always waiting. And he hated himself for his unfairness and cruelty, but not sufficiently to do something about them.

Julian picked up the fossil and traced the rough undulations. Inside it, the separate chambers of the shell would have been divided by thin septa and connected by a tube, which was used for buoyancy control, like the air tanks in a submarine. Thus, each chamber was connected, each contributing to the life of the animal, and activated at different times and different situations.

The Kitty chamber? Did he regret falling in lust with her sexual poise and sophistication, with the delicate face and sensual body? No, he could not do that. In their way, he and Kitty had grown into each other. But tonight, for the first time, he had noticed a flush layered at the base of her neck and a crepiness, which he was sure had not been there the previous week. The discovery hurt. Not so much that the signs were in place but, rather, that he had noticed them.

Time was folding, telescoping and vanishing.

Julian owed Kitty much. And more, he was responsible for her. But the variables of their life together were altering in a manner that startled him. His meeting with Agnes had changed him. Air was slipping from one chamber into another and, having made the mistake of forgetting that the condition of life – and business – was constant evolution, he felt helpless, and stupid, in the face of these forces. Temporarily, he hoped. The knowledge that the levels of his life were shifting flooded him with a mixture of exhilaration and despair.

17

Gordon ‘The Gladiator’ Rice lived in deepest Croydon where, for a fee, he masterminded guerrilla activities -’nationwide’ – to foil road- and house-building. As soon as the filming had finished, Andrew got up at dawn and drove up to see him, explained that the planning inquiry was in June and he needed a bit of advice on tactics.

The Gladiator was not good in the early mornings, but he pulled himself together sufficiently and said he was happy to oblige. He was sorry about the charge, he explained cheerfully to Andrew, but social security wasn’t enough to fund his activities. If a top-up was on offer, he would nip down to Devon and teach the citizens of Exbury the art of civil unrest. After a lifetime of being a problem statistic, he could spot at once where the flanks were weak. His arsenal of ideas included sit-downs on major roads, living barriers stretched across the routes of heavy machinery, and digging tunnels through the foundations of the proposed houses.

‘You must hit them.’ He smacked a fist into his cupped hand, and Andrew was forced to take a step backwards: it was all too apparent that the Gladiator had philosophical objections to – or perhaps did not have time for- laundry