25

Friday

Kitty was reading.

Bees are excellent home-makers but they are also committed to the good of the colony. When it becomes too crowded and insufficient, they take action. A skilled bee-keeper can always tell when they are about to swarm by the sounds issuing from the hive.

There is a shriek as the useless drones are exterminated [Kitty put down her new half-moon glasses], the starving, ageing queen cries and begs her workers to feed her. But they ignore her and continue to groom her, ready for flight and for her final mating.

When had she faced the truth and known her reign was over? When she had seen Julian’s face as he looked at Agnes? Or the lonely days and nights that had followed without Julian, who had stayed in London to deal with the crisis, and she had realized that summer was slipping away into the flux and change of autumn, and that she must quit the hive for the young, fertile queen? But she wasn’t going to be pushed out, oh, no. Kitty was going to quit on her own terms, when she was good and ready.

For weeks she had been busy and was now putting the final touches to her plans. In the drawing room she talked on the phone, first to the sweet man who managed her finances. Second, she had cancelled her Friday appointment at the beauty salon for the foreseeable future. Instead she drove into Lymouth to shop and to see her bank manager and her lawyer.

The bank manager knew Kitty well and together they talked over the options, pushing them this way and that until they reached a compromise. Eventually, Kitty rose to her feet and thanked him, but instead of bidding her goodbye he asked if she wanted to take a little more time to think over her decision.

She said, ‘No.’ Definitely no.

After a snack lunch, she abandoned her normal routine of planning the menu and sorting the linen, the weekly chores that were required in the maintenance of two houses. Instead she took herself off for a long walk along the seashore. Pink and white and yellow, the little town drowsed under an autumn sun: so pretty and prosperous. By the time she had returned to the car with ruined hair and wet feet it was past five o’clock.

Julian phoned at seven and said he would be late.

‘Fine,’ said Kitty, and sat down with a cheese sandwich to watch a television programme. At ten, she tidied up the kitchen and went upstairs to have a bath in which she lay for a long time.

I am practising to be good at this. I am practising to release my soul.

‘Kitty?’ Julian arrived at the cottage a few minutes past eleven. He let himself into a silent, empty kitchen, expecting to see his supper laid on the table. No supper was evident, and he extracted a can of beer from the fridge and trod, reluctantly, upstairs.

Kitty was in bed, reading. At his entrance, she put down her book. ‘Hallo, Julian.’

He sensed at once that her manner towards him was changed. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes.’ Unlike all those other times – those many times when, scented and sensual, she had pushed herself out of bed and run to kiss him – she made no move. ‘Busy week?’

He sank down on the side of the bed and emptied his pockets on to the bedside table. ‘The worst possible. But I’ll tell you about that later.’

She did not say, ‘Oh, please, tell me. Let me help.’ In the old days, her heart would have beaten extra fast with the desire to comfort him. But tonight there was not the answering thud in her chest. Only the still remnants of an upheaval that had arrived, ripped her to pieces, and moved on.

He was curious. ‘Is that a new nightie?’

She glanced down at the plain Viyella affair she had bought that morning. ‘Yes.’

He assessed it with the care he gave everything to which he turned his attention. ‘Not your usual style, is it?’

She plucked at the soft sleeve. ‘It’s warm and comfortable, and the weather is getting colder.’

‘Still, I miss your beautiful silk one.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she burst out, ‘please don’t patronize me. As if it matters what I wear in bed.’

Julian was puzzled. ‘It’s always mattered before.’

She turned away and put up a hand to shade her face. ‘That was before.’

‘Kitty…’

‘Yes.’ The word was dragged out.

He sounded very, very weary. ‘What is going on?’

Kitty drew up her feet. Their years together had vanished entirely in a fog of mutual distrust and forgetfulness and she wanted to create a space between the two of them. She had gazed into the precipice, and perceived that there was no bottom, and said, ‘All right You win, I give up.’ He checked the pretty, elegant bedroom and noticed that it appeared emptier. Stripped. He indicated a dressing-table which, except for her hairbrush, was almost shockingly nude. ‘Kitty, where are all your things?’

Kitty clasped her knees tightly. ‘I’ve been getting rid of them. I decided that I don’t need them any more.’

He managed a smile. ‘That sounds rather serious.’

‘Does it?’ Discarding the frilled skirt of her youth and dressing in the colourless, concealing robe of the sadhu to wander the earth before death. Yes, I suppose that was serious. ‘I don’t need them any more.’

Silence. Kitty felt a heavy ache mass at the back of her throat.

He frowned. ‘And you don’t need me any more either? Is that what you’re saying?’

The lump subsided, and Kitty shook her head. ‘Isn’t it the other way round? You don’t need me. You have other… well, I don’t know.’

Julian cracked open the beer and took a mouthful. Kitty threw back the bedclothes and reached for her dressing-gown. Out of habit, she tied the belt extra tight around the waist to emphasize its slenderness. The gesture was not lost on Julian and, out of habit, he reached over to touch her but she stepped out of the way.

‘What is happening, Kitty?’ he asked quietly. ‘I thought we two had to make a go of it. That was why we had that ridiculous scene with Agnes.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘As with a lot of things, you were right. If that is the case, it is important that we keep on trying.’

She knew that expression. It was Julian being kind, which he was being a lot these days. ‘It’s not just Agnes,’ she said. ‘She was the symptom.’

‘Perhaps we should leave her out of this.’

But she had seen the sudden quickening in his expression, which he strove to hide, and the worst of Kitty erupted. ‘It may suit you to do so, Julian, but I don’t think we should exclude the famous Agnes from this conversation. The minute you saw her, she took up residence in our lives. Agnes made you realize that you did not feel enough for me and our companionship was not…’ she struggled to continue ‘… was not strong enough to build it up again. But, don’t worry, I’m over that now. I tried. You know I tried hard, but even I can tell when I’m beaten.’

She waited for anything he might have to say, and when he remained silent, she extracted an envelope from the dressing-table drawer. ‘This is a statement of our financial arrangements, up to date. As from today, please will you stop anything else coming in from you. Everything is in order.’ She held it out. ‘Take it.’

He ignored it and said haltingly, as he digested the implications, ‘I wish you hadn’t done that. It wasn’t necessary.’

‘Why not? It was part and parcel of our relationship.’

She dropped the envelope on to the bed and sat down at a distance from him. ‘I was educated wrongly, Julian. Women aren’t like me any more. They’ve changed, and they do things differently. I’ve been left behind.’ She swallowed. ‘But I suppose, in the end, they will face what I’m facing.’ And in the act of liberating the words into the ether, Kitty’s heart grew lighter.

See? The prison bars are dissolving.

There was enough truth in what Kitty said to make Julian wince. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty.’ He felt he ought to say more: she was owed explanations but he did not seem capable of making them. ‘Shall I leave now?’

Sudden panic and the terror of what lay ahead almost choked Kitty. She remembered how well they had dealt with each other – in the early days – and what passion and love he had drawn from her. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps half a loaf was better than no loaf.

‘It’s so hard growing old,’ she burst out.

On that first meeting, ten years ago, she had been so aware of her looks. She posed no complications, was realistic yet properly appreciative of the erotic – and judged shrewdly that Julian was used to helping himself to the good things. She had seen to it that it had all been made to seem so natural.

Julian looked at the beer can. ‘Kitty, I should never have got you into this.’

She reared up from the bed. ‘Oh, no,’ she wept. ‘I don’t want you to say that or to suggest that it’s all been for nothing. But look!’ She tore at the belt of her dressing-gown, and wrenched off her nightdress. ‘Look at me. Look at me properly.’ White, curved and shadowed, she squared up to him like a fighter. ‘Now do you understand? Age. And it is time the prince rode off to find a younger trophy.’

Suppressing a shudder, he picked up the discarded dressing-gown and draped it around the small, delicate body. ‘You exaggerate. There’s nothing wrong with you.’

‘At least let’s be honest.’

But she knew that he knew better than to be honest. That much he could do for her. He moved over to the window and pulled back the curtain. It was impossible to see the sea from Kitty’s cottage and it was one of the reasons he had never liked it.

‘You love Agnes,’ she accused him from the bed, dressing-gown trailing awkwardly from her shoulders. ‘You can be truthful.’

There was no point in subterfuge any longer. Kitty had received, deciphered and read the message. ‘It is nothing to do with you, or how old you are, Kitty. It just is. That’s all.’