that I loved Hugo more. I had met Hugo at a party and unforeseen and overwhelming emotions had consumed me. That was all. The love of man and the love of children are different things: the one does not exclude the other. Surely Ben would understand that, if Lou explained it properly? Ben spent so much time playing computer games, barely pausing to eat, that lately I’d sometimes wondered if he knew I existed at all. He seemed scarcely even to register the changing faces of au pair girls.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I am not bad-looking, but no beauty: too thin, too earnest, too practical, I had always thought, to inspire sudden, romantic love. And yet I had! When the two halves, separated by that terrifying law which parts the two who were never meant to be divided, defy that law and meet, there can be no gainsaying them. Hugo and Valerie.
There was something wrong here, something I didn’t understand. I wanted Hugo to return at once, at once, to keep the niggling doubts down where they belonged: what was going on? I noticed I had my pen in my hand again. When I wrote a line or two of Lover at the Gate I felt at ease, buoyantly happy, confident. Put down my pen and I heard in my ears the howl of the fleeing dog, saw the metal flash of Sophie’s shoe—I could not bear it. I picked up the pen. Anxiety dispersed.
The phone rang. I ran to it but it wasn’t Hugo. It was Eleanor Darcy.
‘How did you know I was at the Holiday Inn?’ I was puzzled. ‘Is that where you are? What a strange place to be! Do you really like hotels? I hate them. I just called the number Brenda gave me. She’s good at names and addresses and details. I’m hopeless. I think we’ve got an arrangement to meet tomorrow. I’m sorry, I can’t make it. It’s visiting day for Julian tomorrow, in prison. It quite went out of my head. I know what you’re thinking: fancy forgetting a thing like that! The trouble is, it’s quite easy. Out of sight is out of mind, when it comes to people as curse objects.’
‘Curse objects?’
‘Well, that’s what Julian is, I’m sorry to say, in relation to me. My falling in love with Julian was nothing to do with me, nothing to do with Julian, but part of the curse put on Bernard that his wife would become the love object of a man more attractive, more wealthy, more intelligent and of a higher status than he, so he didn’t stand an earthly. What chance did I have, fond of Bernard as I was, but also, as I daresay you have concluded, and like so many, including I daresay yourself, bored? How is Lover at the Gate coming on?’
‘I keep getting interrupted. Personal matters intervene.’
‘I expect they will. It’s hot stuff you’re dealing with. Is Julian standing at the gate yet, knocking?’
‘Not quite. Just about. I have to get Bernard into Marxism and out the other side. I’m still not sure what you mean by a curse object. Sex objects, love objects—but curse objects?’
‘It was none of our faults. Though I do blame Bernard, for getting himself mixed up with ethnic minorities. After he gave up Marxism, and was out there all on his mental own, as it were, without fear of hell or counter-revolutionary thought, it went to his head. He became irresponsible—’
‘Would you mind if I taped this conversation, Mrs Darcy?’
‘Look, I’m not giving an interview. All this is off the record. I thought that would be understood. I called merely to say I couldn’t meet up with you tomorrow. I’m sorry. But if you’d like to come over this evening—?’
But I couldn’t. I was waiting for Hugo.
‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘Hugo’s coming over tomorrow anyway.’
Hugo had left a full packet of cigarettes by the bed. He left them around to prove to himself that he really didn’t smoke. I broke my faith and smoked one. Just one.
LOVER AT THE GATE [5]
Ellen’s Marxist years with Bernard
‘I’M SO PROUD OF you,’ said Ellen, and meant it. Bernard hammered and puttied, putting their home to rights, at one with the worker, his brother; no longer above manual toil but now rejoicing in it. He who had palely loitered, fearful of moral contamination, now boisterously stamped through practicalities.
‘Man’s self-consciousness is the highest divinity,’ he said. ‘There shall be no other Gods beside it.’