Follies. Rosie Thomas
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finished the bottle as Chloe unpacked. Helen sat curled up in the armchair with her cold feet underneath her and listened as the other girl talked. The champagne sent unfamiliar waves of warmth and lassitude through her veins, and she found herself sinking into the cushions and smiling at the warm colours and scents around her. Chloe’s cases seemed to contain unbelievable piles of silks and cashmere and butter-soft leather, marching ranks of shoes and boots, and handbags in soft, protective wrappings.
There were other pretty, more eccentric things too. A huge, fragile butterfly gaudily painted on rice paper swung airily on one wall. A silver-framed mirror bore the raised motto ‘Look, but linger not’. Chloe made a mock-grimace into it as she swung it into place on the mantelpiece. A collection of heart-shaped tortoiseshell frames all seemed to enclose pictures of different men. All these Chloe laid out among the vanity cases, silver hairbrushes and tiny crystal bottles.
All the time, as she moved to and fro, Chloe went on talking. Had Helen but known it, she needed to talk more than anything else. She needed to put London firmly behind her; Leo and the agency and San Lorenzo and everything else. Almost by accident, the possibility of Oxford had today become a reality. Chloe was so used to feeling confident that it was doubly disconcerting to be nervous and apprehensive. Talking to this quiet girl seemed to help. She told Helen everything, but it was as much for Chloe’s own benefit. The explanation helped to put this mad, life-changing decision into perspective. She had no need of an Oxford degree and it was exactly the abstract, stringent challenge set by gaining one that Chloe knew she needed.
With the last drop of champagne she smoothed a remaining square of tissue paper and tucked it into the last empty suitcase. Helen, who had drunk the lion’s share of the champagne as she listened, smiled vaguely up at her.
‘So here I am.’ Chloe gestured theatrically. ‘Unfettered, and as yet unlettered …’ they giggled happily, ‘… although Dr Hale is about to put that right. And feeling much, much better.’
She stopped in front of Helen and put her hand over the younger girl’s. ‘Thank you for listening to all that. You’re a good listener, aren’t you?’ On impulse she knelt down and took both of Helen’s thin hands between her own warm ones.
‘Helen, I’ve done all the talking, like a self-centred old witch. Now you tell me some things. You’re sad, aren’t you? Why’s that?’
Helen looked into Chloe’s concerned eyes and in an instant the champagne, her loneliness and this unexpected warmth from a woman she barely knew blurred inside her. Boiling tears swept down her face. In an instant Chloe’s arms came round her and Helen’s face was buried in soft suede and the thick mass of dark red hair.
‘What? Helen, what is it?’
There was a second’s quiet before she answered. ‘My father. My father killed himself.’
At once Chloe’s arm tightened around the younger girl’s thin shoulders, but she said nothing.
‘Yes,’ said Helen after a moment, speaking as softly as if to herself. ‘It was in the summer. The middle of August, when the world was hottest and brightest outside. Daddy must have found that very hard, looking inwards at the darkness gathering for him in our house. I suppose it had been dark for weeks before that, months even. At the end, it was as if everything positive and hopeful had wilted, through lack of light. Even our love for him seemed to have no life in it any more, because he couldn’t lean on it. Right at the end, in the last hopeless days, I was still sure that it would brighten the gloom for him. But it didn’t, because he killed himself.’
‘Why did he do it?’ Chloe whispered, as gently as she could, and felt an answering movement that might have been a shrug.
‘It’s a banal story, I suppose,’ Helen told her with a new bitterness in her voice. ‘He lost his job. Not a particularly high-powered job, or anything, just as a middle manager in a middle-sized manufacturing company. My father was always a quiet man – grey, they call it here – quietly doing what he was supposed to do. He came home in the evenings on the train, mowed the lawn, listened to the radio, did what was involved in being a husband and father, but mostly he just did his unassuming job. He must have enjoyed it … no, perhaps needed it is nearer the truth. Because when they took it away, he collapsed inside. They did it all particularly brutally, just pushed him out with a tiny amount of compensation. But that’s not unusual. In my father’s case, I think he knew from the first moment that there was no chance of finding another job. And he wasn’t the kind of man who could turn round and just create another life for himself. He was too mild, and puzzled, and overwhelmed by the circumstances of the life he already had. He just let himself feel shamed and rejected. There was no money, you see. He had no prospects at all, and there was nothing he could do for us or anyone else. So he retreated further into the dark and silence, leaving us behind. Until the day came when he went into the garage, locked the doors and turned the car engine on. He lay down on a tartan knee rug that we used to keep on the back seat. Do you know, he was still wearing a tie?’
‘What about your mother?’ Chloe asked.
‘She loved him. It was the worst kind of shock for her. She’s not very good at being alone.’ Helen rubbed her face with the flat of her hand and, as if noticing that Chloe’s arms were still around her, stiffened and drew back a little. Chloe let her go, noticing the tired pallor and the shadows under her eyes.
‘And you?’ she asked. Helen shrugged again.
‘There are money problems, of course. My mother does some part-time supply teaching, and there’s a tiny pension. But my brother is still a child, really, and needs everything. And there’s a big mortgage, the three of us to clothe and feed, all the household bills. So much money to find, and nowhere …’ Helen’s voice trailed away hopelessly. When she spoke again the reawakening of anxiety had drained away all the colour that the champagne had put into her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I should never have come back. The right thing would have been to get a job, doing anything, anywhere. Whatever brings in the most money. I can help a tiny bit out of my grant, but …’ The shrug, when it came, was defeated, ‘… it isn’t enough.’
‘But they insisted, your mother and brother, that you did come back? Said you’d be letting them down, and your father, if you didn’t?’
Helen smiled wryly. ‘Exactly. How did you know that?’
Chloe laughed at her. ‘Because it’s what any right-thinking people would have said. It matters, doesn’t it? You’re probably very bright.’
Helen was too natural to attempt a modest contradiction.
‘I’m bright enough. I could get a First, if I’m lucky. Before Dad died I’d wanted to stay on and do research. Now, of course, I’ll have to look for something that’s more of a paying proposition. But not to have got a degree at all, that would have been very hard.’
As she watched the anxiety in Helen’s face, Chloe felt the weight of her own privilege. Her own background was not wealthy, but never at any time since her early and rapid success at her job had she had to deny herself anything. Travel, new books, designer clothes, a luxurious flat were as much an unquestioned part of her life as they were remote from Helen’s. Chloe reflected that even her place at Oxford had begun as a move in her sexual game with Leo. Set beside Helen’s difficulties and her family’s sacrifices, that suddenly seemed frivolous and wasteful. She shook herself in irritation and turned to listen to Helen again. The other girl’s face was brighter and more animated now.
‘It’s strange to be back here, after so much. And in this weird house …’
‘Isn’t it?’ Chloe grinned at her.
‘… I’d only been in the house an hour before Oliver Mortimore appeared, kissed me, and asked me to tea on Friday.’
‘Who’s that?’
Helen’s smile transformed her face and the grey eyes shone with amusement in the absence of the shadows. She had no idea why she was talking like this to Chloe, but it felt perfectly natural.