Zelda’s Cut

‘God, what a stupid thing to say.’ She shook her head. ‘What a fool I am.’

She bent and closed the dishwasher door. When she straightened up and saw her mirrored face again she gave the pale reflection a tight, determined smile. ‘I’ll have to try harder,’ she said to her image. ‘I’ll just go on trying.’

Troy on the telephone was always at his best. Isobel was glad to be talking to him without the silent presence of Philip, brooding in the kitchen or walking slowly in the garden.

He answered on the third ring. ‘Troy Cartwright,’ he said warmly.

‘It’s Isobel,’ she said and heard her voice lighten.

‘My star writer!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thanks for calling back. How are you?’

‘I’m well.’

‘And Philip?’

‘He’s fine,’ she said cheerfully.

‘You sound wonderful. How’s the book going?’

‘It’s finished,’ she said. ‘Actually, all except one word.’

‘One?’

‘Yes.’

Troy briefly considered asking her which word, but thought that lay within the area of the writer’s particular talents and outside the remit of her agent.

‘Come out to lunch to celebrate!’ he commanded. ‘I need to be seen out with a beautiful woman.’

Isobel smiled at the thought of Troy Cartwright, slim, mid-thirties, urbane, and living at the heart of fashionable London, needing to be seen lunching with her. ‘Oh, ridiculous.’

‘Not at all. I was looking through my client list for someone who combined brains and beauty and there was no contest.’

Absurdly, she heard herself giggle, an unusual sound in the quiet house. ‘I could deliver the manuscript, I suppose.’

‘Oh please! I so want to see it.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Great. I’ll book a table somewhere expensive.’

She hesitated. ‘It’s not necessary – ’

‘If I am taking Isobel Latimer out to lunch I want the world to know it.’ His voice dropped to a warm caress. ‘So you make sure that you wear something beautiful.’

‘All right,’ she said, surrendering to the pleasure of flattery. ‘I’ll come to your office at one.’

‘I’ll vacuum the red carpet myself,’ he promised.

Philip had walked himself into good humour. He sat in the garden of the pub with a whisky and ice in a glass before him. He waved as Isobel drew up in the Volvo and watched her park and get out of the car. He thought that she looked older than her fifty-two years as she walked across the car park towards him. She was as slim as she had always been, and her glossy chestnut hair had only faded slightly to pale brown. At first glance she could still be the young academic who had sat opposite him at a conference on ethics in the pharmaceutical industry, and argued her case with such precocious confidence and serenity that she had made him laugh and want to flirt with her. He had thought then that a highly intelligent academic wife might be a great asset to a man in his position. He had thought then that he could afford such a wife. He could earn the money, doing work which she considered morally suspect, he could bring home the tainted profits of capitalism, and she could study philosophy. She could be his luxury, a wife infinitely more prestigious and interesting than the flashy blondes of his colleagues. His earning power could buy her a good lifestyle where she could read and think and write. And in return: he could enjoy her.

It all changed the moment he became ill. He knew now that he could have died without her steady strength of mind, her determination that he should survive. But as he watched her walk towards him and saw the droop of her shoulders and the weariness in her very footsteps, he did not feel gratitude, nor even tenderness. He felt irritated. She was always tired these days. She always looked so miserable. Anyone would think that it was her who was ill.

‘Come and have a drink,’ he called. ‘We don’t have to rush off, do we?’

She hesitated. ‘I was going to work this afternoon.’

Philip tutted. Isobel’s problem was that she worked too hard, he thought. Her agent Troy, her publishers, her publicity people – they all thought they had equal right to her time, and she was too polite to say no. People pushed her around, and she was foolish enough to try to please everyone.

‘Take a break,’ he ordered. ‘You need a break.’

‘All right,’ she said, thinking that the bastion, rampart, bulwark or dyke question could be resolved tomorrow morning before she took the train to London.

He limped into the pub and brought her back a glass of white wine, and they sat in the sun together. Isobel tipped her head back to the warmth.

‘This is idyllic,’ she said. ‘I love the month of May.’

‘Best time of year,’ he agreed. ‘The field that Rigby left fallow last year is just filled with cowslips.’

‘We are so lucky to live here,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live in London.’

‘It was a good choice,’ he said. ‘I just wish I knew how long we’ll be able to stay in that house.’

Covertly, she glanced over at him, nursing his drink. ‘Surely we’ve got a good few years yet.’

‘It’s the stairs that’ll be the first difficulty,’ he said.

‘We can get one of those stairlifts.’

Philip made a face. ‘I’d rather move our bedroom downstairs. We could use your office and you could write upstairs. It wouldn’t make any difference to you.’

She thought for a brief moment of regret that she would lose the view from her study window which she loved, and the bookshelves that she had designed. ‘Of course. That’d be fine.’

‘Provided Mrs M. is prepared to keep coming, and maybe do a little more. We’d need to get someone to do the garden.’

‘It’s so terribly expensive,’ Isobel remarked. ‘Other people’s wages cost so much. It’s paying their tax which is so awful.’

‘It’s our lifestyle,’ he reminded her. ‘It makes sense to spend money on our comforts.’

‘As long as we have the money coming in.’

He smiled. ‘Why shouldn’t it come in? You’ve never written a book yet which didn’t win one prize or another. All we need is for someone to buy the option for a film and we can rebuild the barn and put in a swimming pool and a gym.’

She hesitated, wondering if she should state the obvious: that a film was not likely, and that literary prizes and literary acclaim were not guarantees of good royalties from publishers. She stopped herself. She had promised herself that she would never worry him with money troubles. She had taken it on herself to earn the money and to free him from fear of debt when he was facing so many other, greater fears.

‘That barn would be perfect for a swimming pool,’ Philip repeated. ‘I read a paper the other day. Swimming is the best exercise someone with my condition can take. Much better than walking. And if we put it in the barn it would be useful all the year round. It’s hard to get the exercise in winter.’

‘I don’t know that we could afford it,’ Isobel said cautiously.