Two Loves Read online

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t much want an abortion. So I went to see this very nice older man I knew who suggested that I should marry him instead, that he would look after me and love me. And I did and was very happy. And that was Anthony.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Anthony was your father in every way except that one way which was to do with sperm and so on.’

  ‘Anthony wasn’t my sperm father?’

  ‘No. That was the man who was already married. Of course it was very foolish of me to have had sex with that married man.’

  ‘Was it Thomas?’

  ‘No, his name was Alex. I told you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Now to make things even more complicated – and this is why I needed to wait until you were old enough to understand properly – this man called Alex was Anthony’s son. But he promised Anthony faithfully that he’d keep right out of our lives from then on. And not interfere with the baby in any way.’

  ‘And that baby was me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did Anthony love me?’

  ‘He was besotted about you. As I was.’

  ‘You were both besotted about me?’

  ‘Absolutely. We couldn’t stop looking at you. And every time you cried, we cried too.’

  ‘I’m besotted about Jim.’

  ‘Jim’s lovely. But you – you were lovely as an angel.’

  ‘Mum, that’s silly. You’ve never even seen an angel. Perhaps they don’t even exist.’

  ‘Anyway, to get back to our story, this Alex has chosen to forget his promise to leave us alone, and wants to come to see you from time to time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I don’t think I want to see him. I shall tell him off for breaking his promise. Anyway, everyone thinks Anthony is my father.’

  ‘He is really. But Alex feels he wants a little share of you.’

  ‘I shall talk to him like Granny talks to the paper-boy, polite but very chilly. “And please forgive poor little Willy for saying his prayers in bed. It’s chilly.” Do you remember that, Mum?’

  ‘So you don’t think you’ll be too worried about having to meet Alex?’

  ‘Is he coming to live with us?’

  ‘Heavens, no. I’m not at all fond of him.’

  ‘Well, there’s lots of children in my school with an extra father. I don’t mind seeing him the odd Sunday afternoon. What car has he got?’

  Chapter Twenty

  The next day Rosamund felt relief flow through her body like champagne bubbles. She hadn’t realised how much of a burden keeping Joss in the dark about his father had been. Now that she’d told him about Alex, however little had sunk in, at least it was out in the open and she felt almost ready to forgive herself for the whole sad episode.

  She expected Joss to bring up the subject again over breakfast, but the only thing on his mind then was his games kit.

  ‘You never wash my things. I wish I lived with Granny.’

  ‘If I was perfect you’d have to be perfect too, and you’d find it an awful strain.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Anyway I only want my games kit washed.’

  ‘Then remind me about it as soon as you’ve used it, not in the morning just before you need it again.’

  ‘I hate it when you shout at me.’

  ‘Then don’t shout at me. Listen, I’ll dry-clean it for you.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll take it outside and scrape the mud off. You finish your toast.’

  * * *

  She dropped him off at school and then waited for Thomas who was driving up with Harry.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Thomas. You were quite right. I explained things to him and now I feel so much better. Something’s decided now. Quite a lot, in fact.’

  ‘Good. I feel better this morning too, it must be the weather. Stephen and Martin are behaving abominably, I’m way behind with my marking and my A-level results are going to be atrocious, but damn it, I’m coping. I haven’t got over Eliza’s death, but I feel I will sometime.’

  They waved to each other and drove off in different directions.

  * * *

  Rosamund felt so full of hope and excitement that she knew she couldn’t settle to the housework and gardening she’d planned to do that day. Her whole life seemed to have opened out in front of her. Her drawing of Mary-Louise had proved to her that she did have a future as an artist. She’d looked at all her early paintings and realised that they were full of promise. Her failure had been owing to a lack of confidence after Anthony’s death; she’d carried on painting the same old subjects feeling it was all she was capable of, repeating herself without developing her talents in any way. Now she planned to move in a totally different direction, figure-drawing first, then naturalistic studies of men and women against backgrounds of luxuriant colour; Brian working in his garden, his gardening clothes immaculate, his dahlias in serried ranks, the sky behind cloudless and acid blue; Paul in theatrical pose, vanity and world-weariness on his features, a backdrop of velvet curtains in royal purple; Marian and Dora sitting side by side on a squashy tomato-red sofa, the colour behind them intense but rather dark; Joss with frown and cricket bat in front of a tracery of the tenderest summer leaves; she could visualise them all and couldn’t wait to begin.

  She did some shopping in the village – fresh peas, asparagus, little round red radishes, bright green and white spring onions. That day she bought only things that were beautiful; she was an artist and might try a still-life later on. Every shop she went into was full of people she wanted to paint; plump women whose faces were soft and ripe as plums, thin men with weathered brown faces and winter-white arms, pre-school children, Botticelli angels with freckled faces and pink noses.

  She passed the newsagent’s window and saw a display of the new Country Homes magazine. ‘Local Artist wins London Acclaim’ a poster announced – in Marian’s spiky lettering which she’d recognise anywhere. She’d get her to add another. ‘Sale of Pictures. No Offer Refused.’ She’d need space for her new work.

  ‘I’m going to start on some life-drawing, Mum,’ she told Marian when she dropped in on her for coffee. ‘You’re absolutely right. What I need now is to concentrate on my work.’

  ‘Is that what I said, dear?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you for doing the poster in Mrs Johnson’s window, too. I do hope Joss sees it.’

  ‘Brian will take him along there after school to get some strawberry ice-cream … Have you decided what to do about Molly?’

  ‘Yes. I shall refuse to do what she wants but in the friendliest possible way. I’m going to take Joss up to London with me next month and we’ll visit her. I’ve already told him about Alex and he seemed to take it in his stride, so she can’t threaten me about that.’

  ‘Will you stay with Dora, dear?’

  ‘No, with Ingrid. Take a sleeping bag for Joss.’

  ‘You’ll do the rounds, though?’

  ‘Of course. Daniel first, then Erica. And Dora and Molly on the Sunday. Ingrid says she and Erica are getting on really well with the book. All she has to do is try to keep up with the flow of reminiscences. I couldn’t bear to take that away from Erica, all that pleasure and satisfaction.’

  ‘You’re quite right, dear. Molly can look after herself. She seemed a real old battle-axe. I’m not going to feel sorry for Molly and neither must you. Anyway, she’s got Joss as compensation and I only hope she appreciates him and leaves him lots and lots of money in her will. How is Daniel?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said he’d try to phone me this week, but he hasn’t so far. I hope he’ll be reasonably well when I take Joss to visit him.’

  ‘What exactly is he suffering from, dear?’

  ‘Heroin addiction.’

  ‘Heroin addiction! Oh Rosamund, I think you go around looking for trouble.’

  ‘But he’s in a rehabilitation clinic, Mum. So with luck he’ll get over it. You remember
Marie, the girl I spoke to you about? The one with the little baby called Theodore? Well, she was on heroin and she managed to come off it. It is possible. And Daniel seems very determined. At least, most of the time.’

  ‘Well, dear, I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Today, I honestly feel as though I do. Of course, it may only be the weather … Hello, Brian. Finished the shopping?’

  ‘Just about. It’s taken much longer than usual because everyone’s been stopping me to comment on my brilliant stepdaughter. What it is to be related to the famous, eh Marian? Mrs Langsdale wants to buy one of your paintings, Rosamund, for the lounge in the George. And she could display a dozen or so, she says, in the dining room. She won’t be taking any commision either, because Marian and I are amongst her regulars. How about that?’

  ‘Brian, you’re wonderful. Bring her up to see them before she changes her mind. Bring her up to tea. I’ve got some birthday cake left.’

  ‘Have you any idea what to charge her, dear?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure Brian will manage to work something out.’

  * * *

  Some weeks later Rosamund called at the Woodisons’ house and found Mary-Louise in the front garden trying to force some mushy pale green substance past Jim’s clamped lips. She stood for a while watching the struggle.

  ‘Another obstinate one,’ Mary-Louise said at last. ‘At four months old he’s supposed to start on puréed apple.’ Her voice was shrill.

  ‘Would you like to model for me? Life-drawing?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three quid an hour.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Three-fifty.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Any time you like. As soon as possible.’

  ‘I’ll give you a bell.’

  ‘Right. Bye, Jim – I think you won that round. Bye, Mary-Louise.’

  * * *

  By this time Rosamund was looking forward to working from a model, but in the meantime started on another waist-length self-portrait.

  My face isn’t bad, she told herself. I think I’m better-looking than when I was twenty, my bones are more in evidence, I’m much leaner. I was certainly plump as a child. No wonder my mother despaired of me. She’d have liked her daughter to take after her, small-featured and slim, a perfect size ten, whereas I took after my father, much too tall for a girl, large nose and mouth, and overweight as well. I’m sure she didn’t mean to make me feel inferior, but she did. ‘Oh, not another cake, dear. Think of those hips.’ I wasn’t clever or amusing or smart, and I had no self-confidence. No wonder she wanted to send me off to art school. She couldn’t be doing with me.

  She dotes on Joss, but she never doted on me. I think she’s fonder of me now than she’s ever been. She’s quite proud of my achievements, meagre though they are, but most of all I produced the perfect grandchild for her and Brian to cherish and adore.

  I think my self-esteem was at an all-time low in my first year at art school. When Daniel used to say I was beautiful, I thought he was being either kind or sarcastic. I felt he rejected me, but in fact I suppose I rejected him. I was unable to accept him as a lover because I felt he wasn’t taking me seriously enough. For God’s sake, what did 1 expect from him? That he should propose marriage to me, when I was twenty and he twenty-three? Yes, I suppose I did want some high-seriousness, some definite commitment, though I can’t understand why, because I’d seen what early marriage had done to my parents.

  That’s not a bad face. Not a bad likeness either. Not bad.

  My breasts are OK, too. Though of course it’s taken me years to accept that. For years I thought they were too big, too floppy, too pink. I longed for small breasts with small brown nipples. Life-drawing at art school should have made me tolerant of all shapes and sizes but it didn’t. The really sad thing is that I would have been much more ready to have had an affair with Daniel if I hadn’t been ashamed of my body.

  I was still a virgin when I left art school. Ingrid wouldn’t believe me. She had sex at fifteen. She probably had all the confidence in the world, as well as small, pert breasts with brown nipples. I’d like to do a drawing of Ingrid. And of Erica, come to think of it. Perhaps for the jacket of her book.

  My arms are nice; soft and shapely. I love arms. I love elbows. Thomas used to comment on the way I was always caressing his elbows, hardly conscious of it, just circling one and then the other with the curve of my hand, enjoying the intimacy of bone and skin. Thomas had – has – a lovely body, not spectacularly male – wide shoulders, narrow hips – but strong-looking and flat-bellied. Very hairy, too, a great surprise to me the first time I saw him naked, because I’d thought of hairy men as the Italian-type extroverts who wear fancy suits and medallions. Whereas Thomas wears tweed jackets and corduroy trousers and lace-up shoes. I’d like to do a drawing of him in the nude, but I don’t think he’d want me to. He’s rather shy.

  We shouldn’t have had an affair, I realise that now. I think he always felt guilty about it; he’s a nicer person than I am. I didn’t worry about it too much. I was convinced that Eliza had cut him out of her life, and I was right about that. She didn’t want him until she’d lost everything else.

  And I did want him. He was warm and loving, and even if I only saw him alone for an hour in the week it was enough to comfort my loneliness.

  I’ve never tried to do a drawing of Thomas, though I did one of his mother a couple of years back. He’d brought her up to visit me here, she saw the drawings I’d done of Joss and asked me whether I’d do a quick sketch of her. She’s a large domineering woman in her seventies and I suddenly realised that I’d like to do a pastel of her, treating her like a piece of landscape. She had that enduring look about her; her suit was a heathery tweed, her skin downy, almost fleecy, her hair slate-coloured and her eyes a watery blue like the early-morning sky. So I did a line drawing and coloured it in with tiny feathery strokes of pastel, one shade over the other as I do for hills. I thought she’d hate it, I’d made her look really ancient, all veins and wrinkles, but she liked it and insisted on buying it. ‘You’ve really got her character,’ Thomas said. Perhaps I’m better than I think.

  I shouldn’t be thinking of you, Thomas. Whatever we had is over. Perhaps you’re having sex with Mary-Louise now. What’s this about her painting your toenails? Sounds very intimate to me.

  Why should I care anyway? I’m in love with my first love. And in the brief moment when we met again after fifteen years, he was in love with me. And now? Well, now he’s in some sort of hell-state when he can’t talk to anyone, can’t think of anyone, doesn’t want anyone, doesn’t want to touch anyone. He may get through it. He may not. He told me in a lucid moment that he’d started on heroin because he just couldn’t take the world without it. ‘All that shit,’ he said. Well, the world won’t get better; will he get better at accepting it as it is? Will I be able to help him accept it? Will he ever live here with me?

  The phone.

  ‘Thomas! I was thinking about you. What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve had a phone-call from Mary-Louise. She’s in a right state. Wants me to come home, but I can’t – I’ve got classes all afternoon. Can you possibly go down to sort her out?’

  ‘Sort her out? What the hell’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She couldn’t tell me. She seemed quite hysterical. Jim’s OK, though. I got that much out of her.’

  ‘I saw her a couple of hours ago and she was fine. Having a bit of a battle with your youngest son over some apple purée, but otherwise fine.’

  ‘Something must have happened since.’

  ‘All right. I suppose I’ll have to leave my work and go … Of course I’ll go, Thomas. Of course I will.’

  ‘Thanks, love. I’m available for a few minutes at three-forty. Give me a ring then if you need me. I’ve got chess club after school, so I won’t be back till gone five.’

  * * *

  ‘What’s the matter, Mary-Louise?’

  ‘My
boyfriend phoned.’

  ‘Oh God, what?’

  ‘He says he’s got another girlfriend. I must go to see him.’

  ‘Will it be worth it? Mightn’t it make things worse? Where does he live?’

  ‘Oxford. I’ve got to see him. He won’t be able to dump me when he sees me again. Can you have Jim? And can you run me to the station? I’ve got to go now. I must catch him before he leaves work. There’s a train at three-ten. Please, Rosamund. I’ll do anything for you. I said I’d model for you. I’ll do it for nothing. As often as you want.’

  ‘I’ll run you to the station, but we’ll have to hurry. Where’s Jim?’

  ‘Ready in his car seat. My bag’s packed.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘I’ll ring Thomas and let him know.’

  * * *

  They made the station with seconds to spare. And then Rosamund was left with Jim, wide-awake and looking hungry.

  ‘Right, Jim. Babies love being in cars, don’t they, so I’m going to take you on a nice slow tour of the Cotswolds till your Daddy comes home from school. I’ll just fill up with petrol while you’re in a good mood and then we’ll be off.’

  Petrol and then a quick phone-call. ‘Miss Adams, will you please tell Joss to go home with Harry today bacause I shan’t be there until about five. Thank you so much.’

  Another blissfully warm summer’s day. After her successful self-portrait, Rosamund felt elated as though all, or almost all, was right with the world. The sun, shining through the open window of the car, seemed to enfold her in a sensual glow. When Jim was fast asleep, not even stirring, she stopped the car and listened to the birds and the silence.

  If only her present optimism could last, the belief in beauty, the hope of success. She wished she could pray, wished she believed in prayer.

  * * *

  Thomas came to fetch Jim soon after five and took him home to feed him without even stopping for a cup of tea.

  ‘You can send the boys up here if you’d like to,’ Rosamund told him. ‘Joss can make them a meal in his microwave and you can concentrate on Jim. His last feed was at one, so no wonder he’s irritable. I’ve been singing to him but it’s not what he wants. Do you know how much formula he’s supposed to have?’