Chapter 25:b

In which Helen sees how the other half lives

Helen finds it suddenly almost easy to be there, despite the strangeness of the surroundings and activities. Almost as if the recent focus on a higher being has made them all equal and acceptable. To cover this unexpected discovery, she offers, over the chatting and unwrapping of sandwiches, to go and fetch the wallpaper from the car. One of the men volunteers to assist.

Glancing covertly at him, she wishes she too had put on fraying, cut-off jeans and a tattered vest – although she has no such garments at her disposal. She can visualise this man having absolutely none of the qualms she experienced an hour earlier when she felt such a longing to bare herself completely to the sun on the patio. Despite there being no neighbourly window overlooking their privacy, she would have felt exposed to the world rather than the sun. This man looks as if he is more used to being naked than clothed, so brown are his arms, upper chest and thighs.

‘How will you organise the rooms?’ she asks him as they unload the rolls from the boot. The mangy hyena strains towards them, clearly pointing out who his master is. Helen shudders inwardly.

‘We drew lots. For the bedrooms, for the jobs each day.’ He sounds prosaic, almost disinterested.

‘Ingenious,’ Helen says, and then stops. She must sound like a real prig. She quickly goes on. ‘I like DIY. Anything you want me to tackle while I’m here?’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘We’re just clearing out everything we don’t want today. Not really ladies’ work.’ He marches into the house with half the rolls and a cursory pat of the hyena.

Helen flushes and follows, bringing the remainder of the consignment.

During a lull in the snatched lunch break, she tries again. ‘There’s a couple of bamboo chairs gone into the skip. I could strip them and do them up for you if you wanted.’

She immediately regrets this as the same man looks up and dourly repeats to the others, ‘She wants to strip for us.’ Hoots of laughter are followed by an embarrassed silence.

‘Addison wouldn’t like that.’ It is the West Indian who has spoken.

‘Nor do I,’ says Helen coolly. ‘It doesn’t quite tally with the praying earlier.’ She pointedly turns her back and ignores them for the next ten minutes while their lunch break passes.

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Chapter 25:a

In which Helen goes visiting

Helen finds the arrangement for Wednesday absolutely perfect.

Her aim broadens from the mundane to the ideal as she brushes her hair and applies a careful touch of make-up. (She has noticed that many who attend Holy Wind are naked about the face and not so unattractive as she would have imagined.)

The somewhat lame excuse of acquainting Addison with the identity of his plaster figurehead and the rather premature delivery of the wallpaper have been Helen’s perceived alibi for the visit to Newton Grove. But her intermittent waking thoughts through the hours of night – not darkness, for the sky never really achieved that black intended for sleep – have been fuelled by an edge of excitement. She has remembered the acute feelings engendered by the offering of the red poppy. Feelings that she was known, seen for who she was and what she was worth. Feelings that were first brought into the light by an eccentric preacher. Feelings that will not lie down in peace ever again.

She no longer dwells on that initial embarrassment of intimacy; Addison has something she needs. He understands things she is ignorant of, has an insight she lacks. She must pursue that today.

A repeat of the intentional neglect of Carla will eventually play into her hand, though her heart aches at the thought of another period without seeing her. She misses her light-hearted company, aware that they are exact opposites by nature. It is hard to accept that Carla was happily visiting Talie last night instead of ringing Helen’s house to find out what she had been doing all day. On the other hand, perhaps that visit was merely to fill a gap she herself had left. Perhaps Carla had worried about Helen. Gone out to avoid the absence.

Helen is responsible, then, for causing her own discomfort. There is a palpable tension between the need to arouse Carla’s desire for her company to a level where she can be sure of it enduring, and the diametrically opposed need to be with her constantly. This thought occupies her on the drive through town and she is biting pensively on her lip by the time she swings the BMW rather too abruptly into the narrow street.

Curiously, there is an apparent absence of activity around number 56 when she alights. She has had a very lazy morning herself and feels chastened that she assumed everyone else was working. Maurice has retouched her hair into a semblance of youthfulness (she has no objection to grey – distinguée is Maurice’s description – but finds very light brown or fair hair overstreaked with grey quite unsightly). Afterwards, while feeling rather more groomed and distinguée than grey, she watched a video of the gardening programme transmitted before they returned from Wolverhampton. Then, finally, she had a leisurely lunch on the patio behind the somewhat pretentiously named kitchen garden which is approaching its second birthday. The warmth in the air as she surveyed her domain made her almost too drowsy to change into respectability and drive over as promised.

But she had expected to find people working here. The pavement in front of the house has all the requirements of a building site, and also a dog tethered to the railing and resembling much more (to Helen’s mind) a mangy hyena. There is a rubbish skip in the road, precariously balanced on and off the kerb, its sizeable capacity already reduced by a mish-mash of frames, refuse and old furniture. Planks of utility boarding lie stashed up against the house wall and a mixer sits nearby in readiness: obviously Addison has contacts too. He is resourceful, Helen admits to herself approvingly. Many of their clients sit and wait for someone else to offer help.

The house boasts two metres of front yard, with weeds sprouting from the cracked concrete, and a broken ground-level window to the basement; and another similar area at the back, this entered via a passageway between it and the adjacent house – a very odd arrangement, which Helen finds claustrophobic. The back road is, she remembers from her quick tour with Addison, still cobbled.

The front door is wide open and Helen enters without protocol, nodding familiarly to the plaster Shaftesbury in passing. Immediately she hears voices from the back room and walks unthinkingly in on the group.

Addison and the four men are knelt in a circle on the threadbare rug in the centre of the room, backs tall, arms aloft, heads bowed.

Helen feels as if she has walked into a Muslim city in the middle of one of their many daily prayer times facing Mecca. It is not what she had imagined Holy Wind to be about. Addison barely acknowledges her presence, merely says tersely, ‘Lunch break,’ and continues with frequent ‘Amens’ to the petition being offered.

She wonders briefly whether to stay, but since she can think of nothing to do in the rest of the house decides to remain, perching herself on the worn arm of an old fifties chair in the corner. This one too would have to go, she reflects, with only half an ear to the proceedings.

She sits, absently watching the dust particles dance in the band of sunlight flowing through the small sash window, tapping her fingers to the staccato prayer offered by the West Indian in the group. The rhythm changes and the vocal becomes almost musical. She glances curiously up in time to see the lad take an instrument from behind him – not a guitar, perhaps a mandolin. He continues seamlessly rapping out his words, the phrases carefully matched and balanced, chords now punctuating the comments.

Fascinated, Helen hears the prayer turn into a message – one that demonstrates a keen sense of what is going on in the world, but delivered nonetheless to God rather than the audience.

As the chords subside, she is even more surprised to hear herself offer a gentle ‘Amen’. The sincere spirit of the request has completely captured her assent and the prayer has become hers with no effort and no conscious preparation. Somewhat awkwardly, she too rises as the others straighten up from their knees.

‘Food next,’ Addison proclaims, bouncing back to life with a grin at his men. He waves an arm in her direction. ‘Helen, meet the folk who plan to live here. Guys, this is Helen from the housing people.’ His teeth gleam white in the shaded half of the room.

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Chapter 24:b

In which Addison has difficulty facing reality

He can almost hear the silence as he stares, bewildered. Part of him wants to be sick. This must be Carla’s. Did she bring it with her? Keep it from the house of sin? Keep it like a trophy all the way to the refuge, and then bring it here?

No. Part of him knows this is not the truth. He looks at the carrier in his left hand. It is almost new, the shop is in town. She must have bought it recently. For whom?

He looks round wildly, scrunching the bag in his large hand, breathing rapidly. There is someone else. It’s not an affair with Helen. No. That was a red herring. There is another man and the garment is for him. She is still living the old way, still wanting money from selling herself. Even though she has no need to.

He sits down suddenly on the edge of the bed. No. That didn’t make sense either. Carla is transparent. He has seen into her and knows she would not do that. He is losing his mind. Unable to see what must be obvious to anyone else.

Slowly, he stretches his hairy arm down and over to the fallen garment, like a cat about to deal the death blow to a mouse. Instead, in a daze, he takes its slinkiness in his shaking hand and turns it over, allowing it to straighten out and become what it is: a sort of bodice with alluring holes and shapes in specific places. He brings it up to his nose briefly. He pictures Carla arrayed in this thing, standing in front of him, posed and pouty, hand held out to him – like those heathen adverts coercing puny men on the hoardings.

‘No!’

The shout echoes round the bedroom. He will not have Carla that way. He does not need that kind of thing. Theirs will be an honouring union, with God present to help and guide.

He looks down at his unclad lower half and realises he must have her some way. He is losing control. The enemy is prowling at the door like a lion.

There is a faint scratching from downstairs: Carla struggling with the yale lock again. He promised to oil it last week and forgot.

He stuffs the thing back in the now messy carrier and shoves it to the side of the shelves, extracts his blue striped cotton bottoms with a sense of release and is safely cleaning his teeth before Carla appears upstairs. He cannot face asking her about it. The words would refuse to form.

He mumbles a greeting through the toothpaste in his mouth and keeps his face down over the basin.

‘Talie’s agreed to come with me,’ Carla calls as she goes through to Dinah’s room. ‘She likes clinics.’

Climbing into bed after checking the doors and windows, Addison realises that the last ten minutes have been like a dream, losing substance with every word Carla utters.

And the reality is that he is seeing Helen tomorrow without telling Carla anything of the arrangement.

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Chapter 24:a

In which Addison makes a shocking find

Addison is staring into the Last Supper, imagining himself to be the big fisherman: a Galilean, brawny and not inclined to fancies; invited to fish men, by a gentle stranger who knew how to raise people from the grave…

He wonders if he’d have taken any more notice than the real Peter did when the Lord warned that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crowed.

Surely he’d have been on the lookout for the mean trick the High Priest’s servants played on him, insinuating by their rough comments that he might deserve the same fate? Surely Peter should have known they’d get him on the sly, and kept his eyes open? Addison would rather have died than suffer the humiliation of denial Peter endured.

But he must have been an amazing guy to bounce back. Addison is not sure he could have done that after such a breakdown of loyalty.

The reverie gives way to the ringing of the telephone. Addison jumps up guiltily, wondering how long he has ignored it; counts the rings as if they were the cock-crow. He straightens his long legs and reaches the bookshelf in a stride.

‘Yes?’

‘Helen here, Addison. Sorry it’s late. Just back from Wolverhampton. Is Carla in?’

‘Sorry. She’s out at Natalie’s.’

He never thinks to call her Talie like the others do. Keeping a formal distance reminds him it is his group of Followers, although he never exercises this role when he is with them.

There is a pause, as though Helen is surprised to find Carla not there.

He says, ‘Shall I take a message?’

‘No, no… It’s nothing important. Sorry to have rung.’

Addison feels remorse at his treatment of her. She is not like Rebecca imagines at all. Has he been gullible, as if he, too, were a fussy old woman? He should think things through for himself as he used to. If only he were not so tired.

‘It’s okay, Helen. God bless you.’ He tries to reach out to her, offer something more. ‘I wanted to thank you for acting fast on the lads’ house. They’re getting on jus’ fine. I’ll be down there tomorrow afternoon to keep an eye. Pete is sharing the responsibility when he’s not at work. They’re so keen, they work all day and evening!’

‘I’m glad,’ Helen replies. ‘Look, I’ll pop over tomorrow and meet you there. I’ve some wallpaper donated to us by a local firm. Might prove useful. And… I’ve something to tell you and I want to ask your advice too.’

‘Great.’

Addison puts the receiver down and feels lighter inside. So she wants to ask him something and tell him something. ‘Yeah!’ he breathes. The good Lord’s been working in this practical, efficient lady after all. Is she about to become normal? Well, he has something she needs and he will offer it freely. Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find.

The words develop into the popular song they sing so often, and he hums himself upstairs to change for bed. Carla will not be long.

He pops into the spare bedroom that is now Dinah’s and checks on the baby. Probably Carla will be in and out of bed all night worrying about her and checking her breathing, but he for one is relieved at the new arrangement. He even helped clear up after Rebecca and install the cot and changing mat and nappies. A man and wife should be able to have a room to themselves. It helps them relax. After all, they’ve had the baby with them one way and another all the time so far. He grins as he remembers watching Dinah kick from the inside as the pregnancy had progressed. Such a miracle!

Searching through the tiny wardrobe for a new pair of bottoms, he comes across a carrier. He opens it without thinking and onto his arm falls a slinky black garment in lace and satin. He jumps back as if stung and it falls to the floor in a slithery heap.

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Chapter 23:d

In which Helen gets angry and frustrated

They call in at a pub on a country lane before joining the motorway.

As they approach the main doors, which are flung open against the heat of the early evening, there is obviously a regular clientele ready ensconced in the busy, brightly lit lounge. It reminds Helen vividly of the kind of scene she has imagined in a nineteenth century novel: the reasonably well-off letting down their hair at the end of a tiring day, the conviviality slipping out into the night air in waves of anecdote, narrative, guffaw and chuckle. Against such a backdrop, and despite her favourite sweet Martini in hand, Helen is once more overcome with doubt and questioning.

She is used to this; it is second nature to be with the social crowd and sit at Malcolm’s side, supporting and participating in a superficial capacity. But the yearning in her very innermost being for some more tangible expression of belongingness, some indication that she herself has some worth and is not interchangeable with any other woman Malcolm might find in that role on any particular occasion – this yearning is so bright and acute inside her that she simply cannot go on not knowing where she belongs, who she is, what she wants.

Malcolm would say that she should take hold of life as it comes past, even grab it violently as it appears in case someone else grabs it first, go where it leads and not stop to think about every little segment or detail of what she is getting. But she has suddenly become dissatisfied with mindless taking; she has the deepest wish to feel a sense of finally arriving – but where to arrive is the problem. If she grabs, she may make a wrong choice, and if she doesn’t grab she may miss for ever the bit of life she wanted.

Sipping silently at her drink while Malcolm closes his eyes for a few minutes against the sting of wafting smoke, she questions even Carla’s friendship. Can you try on bras together and not be friends? Can you be friends and keep secrets? Does Addison like her and was that only a moment’s frustration he expressed? He has touched her frequently, caressed her cheek, told her to visit him. Was his kindness over the weeks simply the ploy to gain a Follower or even a lifetime’s habit of offering care and sympathy with no real feeling behind it? A flush of warmth starts in her belly and rushes upward through her breast, overwhelms her neck and suffuses her face. How can she not know the answers? She was there, it happened to her. She felt it, saw it, heard it. What sort of an idiot is she? Is she not an adult?

Anger and frustration mix in a violent reaction. Hardly aware of her actions, she stands up, places her glass heavily on the table so that the contents jump out and spill on the polished surface in a jagged line. She is aware that several eyes are on her but cares nothing for their opinion. Her voice emerges too loudly from her throat.

‘I’m going. I can’t stand this oppressive heat any longer.’

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Chapter 23:c

In which Helen views the house and feels the pain

The two acres of garden are quite different from what Helen had imagined over the last few weeks. The concept had intimated to her a sprawl of tended lawns and shrub beds with perhaps a rockery or kitchen garden nearer the house and some deep borders of annuals and perennials from which to gather flowers for vases.

The reality, viewed with leisure since the house is now empty and awaiting the exchange of contracts, is beyond her wildest dreams. Had reality been as she imagined it, she would have been satisfied. But nothing can prevent shock waves of astonishment and then pure excitement rolling through Helen again and again as she stands amazed at the sight which greets them from the gates.

‘Malcolm!’ she breathes. ‘Just look at that!’

And they do; for moments on end they simply stare at the expanse of traditional English woodland that opens before them behind the towering beech hedges surrounding the property. The house itself, narrow but tall, stands, detached and gabled, amid sprawling beech and pine, the tangles of bramble and fern encroaching nearly to the verandah, which protects three sides. Sunlit threads mingle in the undergrowth and light up the roofs and attic windows with a welcome that catches Helen’s breath.

‘We can… afford that?’ she asks.

‘It’s not that expensive,’ he admits. ‘No one wants the bother of travelling in from here. And it’s away from the out-of-town shopping too. But yes, it is worth having and I can afford it… You do like it?’ Malcolm sounds uncertain for the first time that Helen can recall.

‘The garden’s out of this world. Let’s look at the house,’ she suggests, moving at long last to break the trance-like immobility that has gripped them.

Walking up the gravel path to the front door is like wandering up to a fairy castle in a children’s make-believe world. ‘Where do the cars go?’ she asks.

‘Round the back. There’s a double garage. Thought you’d like to make a proper entrance from the front.’

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ she accuses. ‘You saw it when you came down last week.’

‘I saw it on the day of the interview, actually. And it still looks stunning today. But it is just a house after all. You don’t live in the garden.’

‘I shall,’ Helen vows.

And Carla? the voice in her head whispers. I thought you weren’t going to move when the time came?

‘Careful!’

Malcolm’s shout startles her and she jumps back just in time from a bramble sticking across her path. He is already unlocking the barred and studded door. Rather like the doors at Holy Wind, on a smaller scale – but that is an original and this is definitely reproduction, though rather fitting in such a woodland setting.

Inspecting the lower floor first, Helen keeps hearing the accusing voice and cannot any longer take such joy in the house. The three rooms look smaller than she had imagined, and then the upper floors seem ordinary. Even the attic does not hold the attraction she envisaged from outside: it is just another room when viewed from inside, apart from the dormers, which she admits are satisfying. There is nothing wrong, she tells herself firmly; just that the sun has gone behind a cloud momentarily.

And that you have a choice to make, the voice insists.

A choice between Carla and this house.

Between Carla and Malcolm.

Between being herself and free, and being what someone else wants her to be and therefore reduced again to a lifeless facsimile.

And which choice represents which? she asks herself endlessly as they descend to the ground floor together, Malcolm chatting away – rather unusually for him – and she forcing herself to answer.

They go out to view the back garden – if such is an appropriate epithet for the extent of woodland that confronts them – and agree that the privacy it affords is a bonus. There is enough proper garden behind the house, cleared of weeds but standing barren, for them to create a pleasant area to sit in.

‘Red brick,’ Malcolm moots, his do-it-yourself eyes growing distant as the vision grips him. ‘Red brick and a matching loggia.’

‘With wisteria rambling over it,’ Helen adds, ‘and a ledge for the drinks and glasses.’

Beyond this area, they can actually take walks in ‘their’ forest and perhaps even barbecue and eat in the tiny glades they stumble across. Wild and safe, something neither has dreamed of, they know from the look they share. Two acres of woodland to call their own.

‘Happy?’

Malcolm is waiting, expectant. Helen swallows hard and says, ‘Sort of.’ At his quizzical, partly disappointed expression, she hurries on, ‘But I do wish Carla were here to see it.  She’d love it.’

‘Hardly sensible to make the girl jealous,’ he says brutally. He is right. How could she even invite her down? It’s the same choice again, insinuating itself painfully on her consciousness. Either she stays up north with Carla or she moves on in life with Malcolm. There is no middle course of action.

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Chapter 23:b

In which we witness a marital unravelling

‘The good or the bad?’

Malcolm asks the question with his eyes straight ahead as they drive at nearly a hundred on a flyover near the shopping centre at Sheffield.

‘You’re speeding,’ she tells him, resigned to the inevitable, but obliged to point it out. ‘It’s not safe.’ She ignores his own question completely. He asks it so often.

‘I’m not, if you take into account the fact that there’s no other vehicle in sight.’

‘The law’s the law,’ she retorts.

‘That’s a cliché.’

He is obviously on form this morning. Helen knows she can either join him or sit in resentful silence. Since her emotional indifference has been dissipating over several weeks, she decides to throw her all in. Not in antagonism, more for the fun of it.

‘True. Clichés keep us from revealing our true selves; easy words to cover up the real person.’

He turns to her. ‘That’s pompous verbiage.’

‘It’s not. Genuine relationships are built on honest communication – which is what I did just now.’ She grins at him triumphantly, ignoring the secrets she and Carla have been keeping from each other – that is quite separate from this. She excels at word wars.

‘Telling me I’m speeding?’

‘Nope. Telling you it’s not safe… Let’s make that personal: you make me feel unsafe when you drive at a hundred and turn to look at me at the same time.’ She speaks each word distinctly.

‘Thanks for the confession. But I’ll drive.’ He is angry.

Helen suddenly regrets allowing this to get under way.

‘Sorry,’ she says, hating herself for saying it but knowing that a two-hour sulk would cause her greater distress. Things are never like this with Carla. Why can’t Malcolm be open and friendly instead of fighting his corner?

‘As I said,’ Malcolm continues, as if nothing had interrupted the original offer, ‘do you want to hear the bad or the good first?’

‘The bad.’ Helen knows her voice is flat.

‘I’m making arrangements to start the job on Monday. I’ll stay in a hotel until the house is available in two weeks.’

This is not the first time Helen has heard the idea. She had simply forgotten all about it in the past week, what with Rebecca coming, Steve’s threat, the discovery of Carla’s diaries, the party last weekend and then the mugging the other day. So much has been packed into what would normally have been a lazy sun-soaked ordinary week of summer that it seems an eternity since she heard Malcolm broach the idea. He must just have decided to go ahead with the plan. This, rather than the plan itself, causes violent anger to rise within her.

‘You’re just leaving me?’  She swings round to stare at him, provokes no reaction, and is immediately furious that he is heeding her earlier admonition to look straight ahead. ‘Without consulting me about what I think?’

‘I’ll come back at the weekend, and then the following one to organise the removal vans,’ he says equably. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve moved.’

She swivels forward again, seething, and watches the blue signs flash past in steady succession, the countdown to the next service area, the miles from London, the approaching merger of another motorway. Gradually the turmoil inside her subsides. She remembers that her first reaction the other day had been anger followed by purposeful serenity. Why waste more anger now? She will accept the deprivation as a gift – one that she in turn can bestow on Carla, and which inevitably will rebound to her advantage. Not least because she will be free of any intimacy with Malcolm for nights on end.

Resolutely, she stretches to the back seat for the bottle of lemonade and two patterned mugs. ‘What was the good thing?’

Can there be anything good where Malcolm is concerned? Her feelings for him are on a rollercoaster these days. She is not even sure that she tolerates him as she did. It is difficult to fit new wine into old skins – an image she now recognises as more suited to Addison’s armoury than hers. But still apposite: she is bursting out of the straitjacket she is honest enough to see they have both allowed to be constructed round them.

‘I’ve booked for us to go to Iceland in late September.’

Helen’s knuckles show white on the gold bottle cap. The only sound is a long spluttering fizz as the air starts its escape. Her eyes remain fixed on the foaming contents. Is there no end to his domination? She is taken with the wild idea of turning the bottle to face him and letting the contents stream into his self-satisfied expression. But she would quite like to arrive home in one piece.

A near-hysterical giggle escapes her. ‘You knew I wanted to go there, of course. Just the thing to freeze me back into the mould.’

‘Helen!’

She stops abruptly, tears starting to prick her eyelids. Her voice wavers as she continues a moment later: ‘I would so like to have browsed and chosen together. Did you not think of that?’

There is silence, except for the hum of the engine (which Helen had always thought of as comforting – until now when it seems more like the menace of a wasp about to unleash its sting in a flash of unbearable pain).

Then she sways heavily against Malcolm’s arm as he veers sharply to the left and pulls onto the slip road to the service station. He remains silent while he conspires to insert the car between two badly parked vans. Then his grim countenance softens.

‘Helen,’ he says, shifting position slightly to take her awkwardly in his arms across the two seats, ‘I just wanted to be certain we had time together before we fell totally into two separate worlds. We can have another holiday any time you want to pick one. But yes, I knew you wanted to go somewhere different and I just booked it because you were busy.’

His only answer is Helen’s sobbing, which feels to her the unloading of a lifetime of tension. She hopes he cannot see into her heart: with eyes tight shut and mind wide open she is aware of Carla’s arms around her, Carla’s endearments and Carla’s sympathetic understanding. And she is comforted.

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