not! The clock flashed 10.27, 10.27, 10.27. I wondered if Lou would take up his bow and play until ten thirty, or whether he would extend his practice time for four minutes. He would probably do the latter, and hurry through the change of clothes which would prepare him for the half-hour’s weight-training which he did between ten forty-five and eleven fifteen every Tuesday and Friday. Today was Tuesday. I had not seen Hugo for three hours. Already my body was beginning to feel restless: demanding reunification with the object of its yearning. I could feel Hugo’s body similarly missing mine. What confidence, what pleasure this physical certainty of need and equal need begat. I felt my breath come short, my eyes seemed to roll in my head: I wore no clothes. I stalked the room naked. I, Valerie Jones, ex-wife of Lou; poor Valerie, uptight Valerie, Valerie of mind triumphant; ex-mother of Sophie and Ben: the phone rang: it was Hugo, of course it was.
‘Darling.’
‘Darling. Christ I miss you. I can get there at one. Only for half an hour.’
‘Make it thirty-three minutes.’
‘Why thirty-three?’
‘Any time without a nought on the end.’
‘You are all mystery. Stef was never a mystery.’
Stef was his wife. He’d used the past tense.
The phone call eased the torment of desire a little. I found that if I settled down to the tape and the life of Apricot Smith, I became quite comfortable.
Presently I remembered that it was when I had been about to call Eleanor Darcy and confirm the year of her marriage to Bernard Parkin, when I had found myself calling Lou instead, on impulse. I called the number. Brenda answered. Eleanor Darcy was out. No, she could not confirm the year of Eleanor Darcy’s marriage to Bernard.
‘But you were Mrs Darcy’s school friend.’
‘I can’t remember; I’m sorry.’
‘When will Mrs Darcy be back?’
‘I don’t know: I’m sorry.’
‘I wonder whether you could help me a little, Brenda. I’m writing a pen picture of Eleanor Darcy’s father Ken.’
‘I’m not able to help you in that area. I’m sorry.’
So much for leading questions. I wondered where Eleanor Darcy went. I had somehow supposed her to sit in that room forever, real only when Hugo or I were with her. I could see that writing Lover at the Gate had implications more profound than I had supposed. The boundaries between the real world and its imaginary reconstruction became stretched thin, almost invisible. Already I had ceased to be sure which side I was on. Even Lou’s piranha snapping now began to seem like something read rather than experienced.
I put my conversations with Lou and Brenda from my mind, at least for the time being, and had switched on the WP and was enjoying the little moans and buzzes of its warming up, when there was a mighty banging on the door and there stood Hugo. ‘Why weren’t you in the corridor with the door open, waiting?’ he asked.
I scarcely had time to close it before he was upon me. For some reason I thought of President Kennedy, bounding down the corridors of power, forever chasing the flick of a skirt, the back of a knee, the glorious in pursuit of the grateful. It was a couple of hours before I could get back to Eleanor Darcy.
LOVER AT THE GATE [3]
Apricot Smith marries Bernard Parkin
APRICOT WAS IN THE sixth form doing her A levels. Rhoda had a nasty pain in her stomach but refused to see a doctor. A faith healer, Ernie Rowse, moved in to No. 93 Mafeking Street, two doors down from Ken, Rhoda and Apricot. On Sundays men, women and children would collect in Mr Rowse’s back garden, dressed in white robes, singing strange hymns and raising their hands to heaven. They were collecting, they claimed, divine energies for Mr Rowse to dispense during the coming week. They would shake their empty hands over a barrel lined with tinfoil, from which he could at a later date draw out benison. They saw gold and silver dust drift downward from their hands, they told Rhoda. Rhoda was forty-eight, blonde, buxom and so cheerful Ken said she ought to be a barmaid. Rhoda could not see the heavenly dust, but liked the idea of it. Mr Rowse’s followers said when she was whole she would see it. During the week supplicants, bent, bowed, ill or in pain, fell in line down the path between the narrow rosebeds and out into the street, in search of a miracle cure.