Alice Hartley‘s Happiness. Philippa Gregory
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Bloomfeather?’
‘No, and No!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Alice, how could you even think such a thing? Miranda is one of my brighter students, but a mere girl. And you and I have been married for sixteen years! It is obvious that I am committed to the success of our marriage, Alice! Why! Just look at my commitment to the success of our marital counselling! Who was here first today? And who was late, Alice? And who was rude to Mrs Bland?’
Alice goggled at him. ‘But you said last night…’ she started.
Charles sat back in his chair and glanced at Mrs Bland. Promptly she held up one admonitory finger. ‘Stay in the Here and Now, Alice,’ she said sweetly. ‘How do you feel about what Professor Hartley has said to you now?’
‘You’re lying!’ Alice said flatly. ‘I know you are having sex with Miranda. And I know you want to end the marriage.’
Charles smiled at her pityingly and shook his head. ‘Alice, Alice, Alice,’ he said softly. ‘It makes me so sad when I see your jealousy drive you out of control like this. You have delusions, Alice. All this is the product of your jealous imagination.’
Alice glared blankly at him and then at Mrs Bland.
She nodded. ‘Your husband is right, Alice,’ she said. ‘You have to work on trusting him. I want you both to come to me for an extra session this week and we will do some exercises around trust. Would Friday morning at this time be possible, Professor?’
Charles reached for his briefcase and made a great play of checking his diary. Neither of them asked if Alice was free. Alice was always free.
‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘And I think, Mrs Bland, that we should seriously consider whether Alice should have separate therapy sessions to help her cope with her paranoia.’
Mrs Bland nodded, looking thoughtfully at Alice.
‘Perhaps even medication,’ Charles said softly. ‘Perhaps even a period of hospitalization…’
Mrs Bland nodded, thoughtful again. Alice, her world whirling around her, listened to her husband making the first moves to have her put away, and could not find the power to protest.
Charles glanced at his watch, and snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Before we close I want to ask Alice for an agreement,’ he said in a bright, businesslike voice. ‘I want my furniture back in my house by the time I come home this evening – and not a scratch or a dent or a chip on anything.’
Alice got up slowly and walked towards the window. From where she stood she could see the blue roof of Michael’s pantechnicon. It was like a rebel flag. Her spirits suddenly soared. There lay her freedom, there was the open road away from this claustrophobic room and these two experts. Charles could plan what he wished, Alice was Born Free. With new courage Alice swung around and opened her mouth to claim her freedom, to deny Charles’s power, to shriek her defiance.
‘Time’s up,’ said Mrs Bland blandly. No one was ever allowed to prolong the session.
Mrs Bland picked up her pale grey suede music case, shot a quick look at Alice and a longer smile at Charles, and slid unstoppably from the room.
Charles stood up. His smile at Alice was triumphant. ‘See you at home tonight, darling,’ he said loudly enough for Mrs Bland to hear from the next room where she tidied her paperwork. ‘Don’t forget our agreement about the furniture.’
He went from the room without another glance at her. Alice stood by the window and watched him go. As he entered the tower block of the Psychology Department she saw Miranda Bloomfeather in a white miniskirt and high white boots lounge towards him and fall into step beside him.
Alice clutched her skirts in her hands and whirled out of the counselling room, down the stairs and across the lawns to Michael as if she were running for her life.
He was waiting for her in the cab of the van with the engine idling. Alice scuttled across the grass, gathered up her skirts, leaped up into the cab and slammed the door.
‘Drive!’ Alice yelled. ‘Drive, Michael! Let’s get outta here!’
Startled, Michael pressed the accelerator and for once did not stall. The engine roared under his inexpert handling, and he swung the wheel around. They drove noisily around the perimeter road of the campus and then turned out of the campus on to the dual carriageway and headed east along the coast.
‘All right?’ Michael asked over the noise of a driver braking sharply behind them as they wove from slow lane to fast lane and back again.
Alice wound down the window and let the wind ruffle her hair. ‘All right now,’ she said. ‘I have just had a most unpleasant forty minutes.’
Michael glanced at her, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought anyone could be unpleasant to you,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you would have been a match for anyone!’
Alice smiled at him and then turned her head and watched the hedges flicker past. A car overtook on the inside, sounding its horn. The driver waved and shouted something. Alice waved pleasantly back.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s odd. I suppose it was an old bad habit.’ She paused. ‘I think I’ll give it up,’ she said.
She lay back and closed her eyes, reviewing her marriage as an old bad habit which it was time to give up. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal. The image of Mrs Bland’s conspiracy with Professor Hartley was left behind them. Alice was driving away from the bastion of the Professor’s power: his work, the institution of the university, his authority over his students, his control over Alice. Alice could feel the bonds of a lifetime stretching and breaking. She threw back her head and started to hum in the long pulsing column of her white throat.
Michael smiled at her pleasure and changed gear from second to third, the engine screaming for release. A motorcyclist cut in front of them and then felt terror surge as the van leaped forward and chased him from lane to lane across the road as Michael glanced at Alice and swerved to the left, and then turned his attention back to the road and swerved to the right.
It was a pleasant drive in the early-morning sunshine. Grass-like stuff, which Michael vaguely assumed to be wheat, was growing green in the fields. White birds which were probably seagulls were circling behind a lone tractor. On the hills of the Downs the little blobs of white were sheep and the tiny blobs beside them were either very small sheep – perhaps lambs – or dumped copies of the European.
Alice wound down the window and the sweet smell of fresh-cut hay blew into the cab. Michael sneezed; Alice inhaled deeply, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her face was shining with her joy while her heart still pounded with the throb of adrenalin. Every now and then she exclaimed ‘And another thing…’ and then fell silent. Her hair crackled with static electricity as if it were charged with Alice’s newly freed energy.
They drove along the main road, and then turned right down the narrow road to Rithering village. Small birds sang loudly in the hedgerows, the uncut grass of the verges was speckled with flowers which Michael recognized unerringly as daisies of various different shapes, sizes and colours. The hawthorn buds were thick and white in the hedges, apple blossom and cherry blossom snowed petals down on to the lane. Michael thought that the eglantine was probably blowing. He tooted his horn at a particularly sharp corner and waved with the casual friendliness of country folk at the driver coming in the opposite direction who was forced to brake and swerve and run into the ditch.
‘Nearly there,’ he commented.
Alice opened her eyes and leaned forward to rummage in a large black rucksack at her feet which was lumpy with bottles of medicine and packages of herbs and seeds.
‘What have you got in there?’ Michael asked curiously.
Alice veiled her eyes with her eyelashes and smiled. ‘Nature’s cures,’ she said. ‘I have been a herbalist and a natural healer for many years. If your Aunt is not ready to leave this earthly plane it may be that I have something which might