the gas bill had not been paid and the central heating had been cut off. But he’d been quick off the mark on Loony Sunday, as the media now referred to it, and all the bills were paid. The house glowed with heat and light. It had even been dusted. He was uninterested in Eleanor’s predicament, or the events which had led up to it. A jazz band, circa 1925, was in performance on the television. He did not turn the volume down.
‘I lost Gillian to your Bernard,’ he said, loudly and cheerfully.
‘Can’t say I mind much. She goes on looking after me. Tell you what, I tottered round to No. 93 the other day. It’s been sold at last. Loony Sunday saw to that. Saw your mother there, bold as brass, bright as day.’
‘Rhoda?’
‘No, not Rhoda, Wendy. Your mother.’
‘Did she speak?’
‘How could she? She was dead. She just stood there in a kind of pillar of light.’
‘Was she angry with you?’
‘Not particularly. Why should she be?’
Eleanor switched off the television.
‘Because you made her pregnant, failed to marry her, neglected her, drove her to drink and then married her mother.’
Ken considered. ‘It’s one way of looking at it,’ he said, ‘but not the way I do. Personally, I blame Rhoda.’
He turned the television on again, but Eleanor thought he looked a little shaken. She was glad.
Belinda was cool on the telephone and said, ‘Frank really had a hard time over that stupid money business. It was beneath his dignity to go round picking up money from the street and now everyone’s paid off their mortgage but him. Whatever was Julian thinking? It’s distorted everything and Frank’s furious. You struggle and struggle and suddenly what’s it all about? I don’t think it’s really sensible for you to come to stay, Ellen.’
Brenda said Eleanor was more than welcome to stay as long as she wanted, but perhaps she should wait until the media attention had cooled down a little, and the trial was over: she wasn’t too keen on having the children exposed to the full glare of publicity; she wanted them to live simple lives. Eleanor said she thought it was very likely they would, and took up Liese’s offer of her holiday home; a pretty, simple house in the Forest of Dean. Here she sat out Julian’s trial. Julian was acquitted of tax evasion but found guilty of misuse of public funds—the hospitality offered at Graduation Week events seen in retrospect as grossly extravagant—and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Eleanor, in the healing tranquillity of nature, for the space of a year, kept her silence before returning to civilization and ordinary society, and most generously offering the story of her life to you, the readers of Aura.
Of her spiritual journey during that year she remains silent: it must be left to someone other than myself, Valerie Jones, to record and communicate. It is my part to write the gospel only of the early years.
Lou comes to the Holiday Inn
I WENT DOWN TO reception myself to ask them to fax through the last pages of manuscript to Aura. The manager asked to have a few words with me: there had been some trouble with Hugo’s Amex card: he was sorry to have to trouble me, but could I register my card with him? I said naturally I would, but the truth was I only had Visa and that, I knew, was way above limit. I looked around for Lou, who, although he growls at such times, usually gives good advice, and then thought, but I’ve left Lou. I’ve left home. I’m with Hugo. And I found myself thinking, Hugo? Who’s Hugo?, which was very strange.
I could hear the fax machine going in the office behind reception and with every page it was as if some blight were being scraped away, some languorous, over-sweet, sickly fungus. It hurt as it lifted: as sudden bright light hurts those long incarcerated in the dark. Of course it did. Bits of tender, soggy skin were tearing off with the mould.
‘Could I just sit down?’ I said to the manager, and he helped me to an armchair with a rather firm squeeze, which might have been a policeman’s touch, or that of a man who knows the woman he touches has been holed up in a room with a man for weeks. How could I tell? Had it been weeks, days? I would have to look at the hotel account to find out. I could