there at the bottom his priceless collection of rosettes: faded, blue and yellow: a few of them red. The red one from Potton: Lord, but they had flown that day. Galloping through the finish, teeth in the mane, spectators scattering, and he patting and patting the hard, sweaty neck; Trevor, like his owner, half-crazed with delight at his own daring.
And his jockey’s skullcap, too, beneath a rusty black silk. He tried it on, did up the leather strap beneath his chin.
And goodness, there was the flat cap he used to wear around horses: green cord, well faded. He tried that on, too; it felt damp to his fingers. Birthday present from Mel, his eighteenth. In the mirror he saw a figure from another world. A figure that knew nothing of the poet, nothing of the Cartesian Morgan. More than the skullcap, the flat cap made him look like a horseman. He could see himself, lungeing the little mare, in his rewaxed Barbour, the ancient cap over his eyes.
He removed the hat, and lobbed it back into the trunk. Everything else followed. Then an idea struck him. He went into the garage and started poking about near the back. It was an area that had scarcely been touched since his father died. For a while it looked hopeless. But then he spotted a filthy piece of tarpaulin. Standing on boxes and leaning over bundles of newspapers, he seized it. And it was, it really was his or Trevor’s New Zealand rug. It would need re-proofing. But it would do, if it fitted. And there, wrapped up inside, was Trevor’s night rug, and even a string vest or sweat-rug. Aladdin’s cave, that’s what it was.
He carried everything out to the Jeep, and smiled – almost a pussy-face – at the way the Jeep looked right when full of horsey kit. And so he poked about the kitchen in a fine good temper, looking for food. He decided to make a coq au vin; the ingredients were all there, perhaps by design. It was a dish she always liked him to cook.
She arrived, the house now reeking of wine. ‘Oh, you heavenly infant,’ she said, ‘I know I ought to prefer you to come to Marce, but it is truly wonderful to come home to your cooking. I shall surely go to hell for thinking such a thing.’
‘Do you think,’ Mark asked, ‘it’s time for Drinks Before?’
It was over the port, Mark taking a mere half-glass, since he had to drive, that his mother at last brought up the subject that had been oppressing them both all weekend. ‘This business with Morgan,’ she said. ‘Is it irrevocable?’
Mark had been quietly terrified of this moment. He feared the weight of her disapproval: of his fecklessness, of his helplessness. Once again ruining his life in a moment of folly. No Oxford, no proper job, now no wife, ‘I think it might be.’
‘Oh dear. Oh dear. And are you – er – committed elsewhere?’
He decided not to make a joke about Miss Chance. ‘No. Not my line, really.’
‘Oh, what a pit-pit. What a pit-pit.’ Mark had heard her use the expression to cover eventualities from a disappointing birthday present to the outbreak of nuclear war. ‘I am very sorry to hear it. But, Mark, listen to me. I have known parents express dismay when their children have problems with their spouses. I remember when Madeleine took sides and blamed Anthony for the break-up with his girlfriend. As a result, she didn’t see Anthony for two years. Or perhaps he turned up, grudgingly, at Christmas. But he married Anne, as you know, and everything worked out for him. And Madeleine accepted the situation and there was a reconciliation. And a scar too, no doubt, and certainly a long and painful gap. I don’t intend to have a long and painful gap. So please understand this. I know you think me a judgmental person, and with justice. But there will be no judging from me in this matter. I value you more than I value my own capacity for judging.’
Mark laughed, touched, and said: ‘In this one instance?’
‘In this one instance.’
For once, Mark was able to park right outside, so that was a bonus. He lugged the trunk, step by step, up to the front door, and then with a brief back-snapping exertion carried it into the hall. The rugs? Too stinky. He would leave them in the car till he had bought the re-proofing stuff. He fetched the bag of bachelor shopping, the heat-up meals, the beer; also a treat he had planned for himself, beancurd, oyster mushrooms, fresh chillies of the terrifying little green wrinkled kind. He knew what to eat, but not how to fill up the evening.
She had been.
At first nothing more than a twitchiness. Mark felt like James Bond finding that the hair he had stuck to the wardrobe door was no longer there. There had been an invasion, he was sure of it before he found any hard evidence. Then things became clearer. There was a coat missing from the hall, the one that billowed about when she wore it, as she almost always did, unbuttoned. And the Burberry was gone too, her famous spy’s mac.
Would there be a note? His heart stopped for a second as he considered for the first time the fantastic possibility that she was still there. He wanted that very much, and wished with all his heart to avoid it. And of course she had gone. And anyway, he would have noticed her car in the street, the famous Flying Toad Citroën DS. No, she had come and she had gone. Taking, no doubt, papers from her study and books from her shelves and clothes from her wardrobe. And some treasures, of course. Had she taken her less portable treasures? The snowstorm collection? Dancing Shiva? That would be an irrevocable step. But come. That had already been taken, had it not?
He walked into the sitting room: the great Islamic drapes were still there. And then a double take: his own, or Callum’s addition to the décor had gone. Marianne Faithfull and Brigitte Bardot were no longer pinned to the gorgeous fabric. How childish: she had torn them up in a fit of post-feminist fury. No she hadn’t: there they were on the long, long sofa, rolled loosely together. And something pinned to the drape behind the sofa, where Marianne had, hand on zip, so recently pouted.
Mark went to inspect it. It was a snapshot he had taken himself. It showed a naked woman. She was looking at the camera with an expression of frank irritation. The woman was Morgan.
He laughed out loud. He laughed in sheer delight at the beauty of the move. The picture was years old. He and Morgan had once spent some weeks in Greece and, in a deserted cove, Morgan had removed her clothes to swim and bask. She was caught half sitting, half lying, drying in the sun after her swim when Mark, driven by twin irresistibles, lust and the love of a jest, had sneaked up on her with the camera. She had divined his intention a fraction before he had pressed the shutter, hence the irritation.
But she liked it, when they examined the pictures in post-holiday nostalgia, ‘I like the way that clothes or their lack is a matter of supreme indifference to me. All that concerns me is my urgent need to give you a bollocking.’ And she had pinned the picture to her notice board in her study, along with odd postcards, notes to herself, various trouvailles. She received visitors in the study, and some of them remarked on the picture, ‘It’s very revealing, isn’t it?’ she always said, ‘It reveals my temper.’
But it didn’t, not really, because the incident had ended as such incidents must, when people take off their clothes in the sun. The picture was revealing all right, and it revealed a great deal more than temper or tits. Perhaps, Mark thought, it revealed their marriage.
‘But it’s not an erotic picture at all,’ she said, ‘I am unaware of my nakedness.’
‘Precisely what makes it erotic.’
‘Besides, I’ve got
