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Extended Work
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| A Wretched Existence | |
| By paulgpaul | ||||||||||||
| 15 March 2006 | ||||||||||||
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This is an unfinished novella I began in 1998 and to which I've returned recently. It is offered, in weekly chapters, for criticism. ‘A Wretched Existence’ - Chapter One The night I arrived at Janet’s, having brought the children to stay with her for a short holiday, I went back to Court Wood, but in a dream. In ghostly form, I was visiting the manor house, rising tall and grey amongst the laburnum trees. It was early evening as I went up the drive. There, flanking the front door, were two bronze urns, replete with geraniums. I paused in front of them to watch the last glints of sunlight fade from their burnished sides. I surveyed the windows at the front of the house. They were dark except for the one looking into the sitting room. Here I saw a man I did not know – a weekend guest, he had to be – doing a crossword in front of a small open fire. The mantelpiece was as usual cluttered with invitation cards and used envelopes. The tables and chairs still bore their old fussy-patterned coverings and there, next to them, was the stool I had once, to the embarrassment of all present, said resembled the lid of a sewing basket. Standing on the sideboard was a silver drinks tray that held six tumblers, a bottle of vodka and a glass jug of tomato juice. I looked beyond, into the unlit lobby, where I could just make out the dark outline of the upright piano and an arrangement of peacock feathers rising out of a slim vase. And then, I noticed, as I moved to look through the little window of the alcove to the left of the doorway, that table on which lay the guest book and a shallow wicker basket for outgoing post. A basket that was sometimes a receptacle for the figures I used to knit whenever I felt my nerves unravelling – figures that someone once likened to voodoo dolls. I turned my back on the window and continued walking along the wall, around the corner and towards the stables. These were too dark for inspection and seemingly not in use. I paused at the gazebo to watch a purple mist creep up the hill, and when it had overtaken most of the garden, I used my memory to keep to the path leading into the courtyard, where I found the magnolia tree at the side of the back door draped in fairy lights. Beyond was the terrace, and as I made my way towards it I passed a window that looked into the bright, tiled kitchen, I could see a cook and a man attired as a butler, both hired in for the occasion, standing over the Aga. I knew they couldn’t see me but I felt awkward as I stood witnessing their audible gossip, their offstage excitement, their pleasure in their unnecessary uniforms, and so I moved on to and along the terrace. The round table in the dining room was, I counted, set for six, with three crystal glasses standing at the head of each place. The only light in the room came from the candles that stood at the table’s centre. This highlighted the gold-lettered spines of the books while at the same time obscuring the shelves that housed them. But it was a different scene that awaited me in the adjacent drawing room. Over the mantelpiece and another fire, was the painting, spot-lit; the painting that had contributed to my downfall. And there, just a few feet away from the partially opened French doors, striking that odd pose that people fall into when they are trying to give the impression of being uplifted by great art – there, with her forefinger poised on her raised chin, was an intently gazing Olivia, my aunt. Standing next to her was the crossword man from the sitting room. I recognised him now. He was the art dealer whose deceased wife had been Olivia’s oldest childhood friend, and one of Olivia’s most fervent supporters in the commune venture. He pointed to a detail in the painting, somewhere in the lower left-hand corner, and was reminding Olivia he found it perplexing and exciting. What a good thing she had thought to have it cleaned, he proclaimed to her in his – to me somewhat muffled – Home Counties affected tone. It remained a fitting tribute to the memory of its subject, God rest her soul. ‘Hmm,’ said Olivia. Then her eyes darted to the door. Enter the butler, with two glasses of champagne on a tray. ‘Oh, thank you so much, Porter. You are kind. Yes, that will do very nicely.’ The butler retreated and closed the door behind him. Olivia and the art dealer took their first sips of champagne. She told him how pleased she was to see him again. The art dealer told Olivia how sweet it was of her to have invited him again. Olivia apologised for the invitation having been ‘at such short notice’. The cuckoo clock above the side table bearing the photograph of her brother standing with Queen Elizabeth, struck seven, and two cars rolled up the drive. Out of the first stepped two of Olivia’s long-necked, designer-suited friends; the first one I remember used to be an archivist, and the other did something with a repertory company somewhere in the North of England. Out of the second car stepped a flashily-dressed dark-haired woman whom I recognised as Simon’s barmaid friend from the Cambridge days whom he had personally recruited to the commune, though I never understood why because she didn’t seem the type. Only later had I realised that he’d been acting as a proxy; Roger had wanted her. Audible groans from the other two women as she approached them. ‘Oh no, not her again,’ said one, and the other hissed, ‘Just pray she hasn’t brought her friend!’ But she had. Out of the darkness came lumbering a huge man in a crumpled evening dress. He didn’t see me as I walked past him. He looked drunk, and seemed uninterested as the Barmaid presented him to what were evidently going to be their dinner companions. ‘You’ve met before, I’m sure,’ she said, in a loud voice, clearly hoping this would deflect them from his demeanour. ‘Yes, of course we have,’ said the archivist brightly, It was at Roger’s seventy-fifth birthday party.’ I left them to it and moved on in the direction of the cottages. I skirted the dark mass that was the orchard and was heading straight across the small meadow towards the cottage that had once been my home when suddenly I stopped, as if in response to a shouted warning. Looking over my shoulder into the brightly lit sitting room of the other cottage, I thought I saw the reason why, because there, at the window, staring vacantly out, was Charlotte, brushing her short ginger hair with those slow, exaggerated strokes of hers. Now she seemed to see me. Her lips curled. She sucked in her breath as if preparing for speech, but then let it go again, shrugged her shoulders and moved away from the window and out of my view. Duplicitous Charlotte, a woman scorned, why did she have to pick on me? I moved on to the cottage that had briefly been my marital home. I looked into the long room, and the scene I saw was familiar or so I first thought, down to the last detail. But I paid no attention to the books, the pictures, the carpets or even the toys, because there, sitting on the sofa in the far left-hand corner, were the children. They were dressed in their pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers, their hair wet and recently combed and parted. Their eyes were on the television, which I could not see. At the other end of the room, sitting at the head of the dining table, his head bent over an open book, was Simon. He looked the way he used to look, the way he would still look, I suppose, even if I had remained with him. By this I mean to say that there was that untidy long hair that made him look younger. He was dressed in a dark-blue shirt and what appeared to be an unusually baggy pair of black trousers, a mode of dress he’d affected because he imagined it was appropriate to ‘communal living’ – a remark of his I had grown to hate when its true significance had dawned on me. He kept looking towards the low-beamed door that led to the back of the house, but because I was looking at him, I saw the smile that brightened his face before I saw the cause. Before I realised that the scene could never include me – that the family I saw inside, the family I had been so convinced was my family, did not want or even need me; it was complete in itself. The woman who had entered the room; for whom Simon now rose to greet with such pleasure; for whom the children now abandoned their television programme with eager cries. It was Anna. As she wrapped her arms around them, she looked over her shoulder, locked eyes with me and gave me a triumphant smile. That was where the dream ended, and it brings me to the beginning of the story I now have decided the time has come to tell. I don’t know what will become of me once I’ve finished it. Some might say that it was not mine to tell. But there’s nothing worse than living inside someone else’s story. This is what happened: I fell in love with a man, a writer, only to find myself in a book he’d written about another woman.
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