Tessa Hadley - Sunstroke and Other Stories

— So what would you have told him, then? If you’re so truthful.

He wanted to keep his mouth shut against her but he couldn’t resist giving his opinion, beautifully expressed. There had been a time when she would have hung on these words of his devotedly. — I’d tell him that without death life would be formless. That change is the life force.

Christine burst out with a loud snort of laughter. — Well, try that then! Just try it. What d’you think about that, Thomas? Daddy says you have to die, but not to worry. It will give your life a nicer shape.

Thomas gave a rather stagy mew of despair, as if in fact he’d lost interest in the subject, and snuggled his head reproachfully against Christine’s lapel. Alan thought Christine encouraged him to be precocious. He walked away from them now, faster than they could follow, his shoulders in his black greatcoat bowed against the wind, head down, his hair blowing out behind. Then for a while he turned round and walked backwards, facing them, looking at them. Christine couldn’t remember if that argument had actually been the end of things, or if they’d made a truce later that afternoon or that night, in whatever hotel or rented cottage they were staying in, and gone on patching things up for a while longer.

The morning after Thomas’s visit, Christine was climbing the stairs to her office at the university when someone came running up below her.

— Dr Logan?

Christine paused, resting her pile of books and papers on the banister; someone young with a blonde head lifted to look up at her came around the stairwell with a clatter of heels.

— Dr Logan? Do you mind if I just talk to you for a moment?

Because she was expecting a student with a query about an essay, there was a disconcerting lapse of seconds before Christine registered that the blonde head belonged to Anna, Thomas’s girlfriend, whom she’d known for three years. Of course, there was no reason for Anna, who worked in the wardrobe department at English National Opera, to be on campus: she had never been there before. Also, she had never called Christine Dr Logan.

— Anna, darling, how lovely to see you. Whatever are you doing here? How did you find me?

— I want to talk about Tom.

In one smooth movement, feeling in her bag for her office keys, Christine decided that her first loyalty was to Thomas’s confidence. She turned on Anna a look wiped clear of any foreknowledge.

— Is something wrong?

Anna’s face was guilelessly open, sorrow stamped on it like a black bootprint. She could not speakuntil Christine had her door open and they were safely inside. Under the posters and potted plants Christine put the kettle on — Anna nodded an indifferent assent — to make peppermint tea. Anna pressed her palms against her cheeks: her hands were big and pink and sensitive, like her ears, with fingertips reddened from sewing.

— He’s seeing someone else.

At least Christine wouldn’t pretend not to take her seriously.

— Tell me about it.

— I mean, I don’t have any proof. Just the usual silly stuff. Times he’s late coming home, things he says he’s doing that don’t sound quite right. Just something: like he’s all the time slightly impatient with me, but then he’s sorry for that and covering it up by being extra nice. I just know the way Tom would be if he were doing it.

— It could be nothing. I know he’s the nicest boy in the world, but underneath all that he can be moody.

— I actually thought he might have talked to you. I know he came to see you yesterday. I haven’t spoken to anyone else about this.

Anna had always treated Christine with tender respect. Now she scanned her intently with strained-open blue eyes, careless in her desperation. Love, this destroying kind of love, swelled the girl up, gave her a ferocity and an authority that Christine had never seen in her before.

She shook her head sympathetically. — He talked about work.

— He didn’t say anything about me that struck you?

— He worries about whether he’s doing the right thing, in his job.

— Is that all? Are you sure? I have to know what he’s thinking.

— He’s bored stuffing envelopes for someone he doesn’t believe in.

Anna sighed, frowning impatiently at Christine, or through her: she would know what she was looking for when she found it, and it wasn’t this. She wasn’t convinced that Christine was telling the whole truth. A pressured moment swayed in the air between them: Anna jostling roughly for more, Christine blandly resisting.

— He did mention wanting to travel in Europe. But I don’t know how serious that was.

— You see. I’ve not heard anything about that. Where in Europe exactly? When? Who with?

— He was probably only talking about a holiday. Budapest, perhaps? He didn’t say anything about who with.

— There. You see?

— I suppose I simply took it that he meant alone.

Anna stood up from the swivel office chair and turned to stare out of the window at nothing, below: a nowhere space between the Humanities block and Social Sciences, furnished with a few benches and young trees. She was tall, the same height as Christine, but with a figure that Christine had never had: high full round breasts, a narrow graspable waist, long slender haunches that suggested some graceful running creature, a gazelle. Between her short cut-off top and the absurdly low waistband of her trousers was a long expanse of flawless goosefleshed golden skin, curving into a sweet round rump. The clothes seemed incidental; Anna’s young nakedness was in the room between them. With a sharpness almost like longing, Christine was aware of Anna’s piercings, even now that her back was turned: in her nose and her belly button, gold rings with little ruby-coloured beads. These young women didn’t know what they had. They suffered because they couldn’t have Thomas to keep, but they had the struggle over him, the game of pursuit and being pursued, and the sometime possession of him in the flesh. For as long as the thought lasted, that snatched possession felt to Christine like the only thing worth living for: a possibility of joy that was no longer available to the mothers of these children.

Anna turned from the window. Her face was blotched an ugly red with tears.

— What would you do?

— Well, I’d ask him, Christine said at once. — Don’t you think that he’ll tell you the truth?

— Yes, Anna said bleakly. — I expect he will.

At home Christine prepared an omelette for her supper. She washed lettuce hearts and vine tomatoes; she sliced cucumber and made a vinaigrette. She mashed parsley into a lump of butter with lemon juice, and sautéed a little tinned tuna in a pan with finely chopped shallots. When all this was ready she broke the eggs into a bowl, to beat them. The second egg had gone bad. It felt strange to the touch, the shell weak and scabbed, but even as she registered this it was too late — she had cracked the egg against the side of the bowl and a foul greenish liquid poured out between her fingers, the thin texture of water, not albumen. A stink of putrefaction thrust wildly, rudely, into the kitchen.

She didn’t know what to do; she pressed her mouth and nose against her sleeve, not pulling the shell apart any further, not wanting to see inside. The mess was too awful, too violently offensive, to pour down the drain; it would surely come back at her, and perhaps at her neighbours, for hours afterwards. She found an empty peanut-butter jar with a lid, saved for recycling, tipped the whole lot into that, and screwed the lid on, only half allowing herself to look at it. Then she ran downstairs out of her flat to the bins outside, where she buried the jar deep among the rubbish bags.

Upstairs she opened all the windows, even though it was raining, ran water for long minutes down the sink. She bleached the egg bowl and the dishcloth she had used to wipe up the few drops of egg that had spattered on the counter; she washed her hands in the bathroom over and over. Still, every time she put her fingers to her nose she was haunted by the smell. The thought of the rest of her supper nauseated her; she tipped the salad and the tuna into the bin. She knew she was being irrational; she ought to phone a friend and make a joke out of her small disaster, and perhaps go out for a drink and something to eat. Instead she abandoned herself to sulking, lying on her side on the sofa, her hands clasped between her knees. The idea came to her out of nowhere that there would be a last time that she brought anyone home to make love in her bed. It was not yet, it might not be for years, but it would come, even though she might not recognise it until long afterwards.