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She obeyed, stirring sugar into her cup with a thoughtful air. 'I might go
down to see Antonia,' she said. 'And the children.'
'Today?'
'Yes. Do you mind?'
'Of course not. Drive carefully, won't you? And give Antonia my love . . .
and the others.'
Surely it was a good sign, he thought. It had to be . . . didn't it? He wished she
would look at him properly. He didn't know what she was thinking . . .
feeling. It was like dealing with a different person. Once he had thought he
knew Trista. Now he knew a whole lot more about her that he hadn't before .
. . and it made her a stranger to him.
She looked no different when he came home that evening, except that she
had changed her clothes. He looked at her searchingly, and asked, 'Did you
see Antonia?'
'Yes. She's fine, and the new baby's beautiful,' Trista answered without a
tremor. 'Kirsten sent something for you, a drawing.'
She went to fetch it, then disappeared into the kitchen. Later she served him
a superb meal, and while they ate it she made small-talk, as though she were
at one of her father's dinner parties. When she started to get up and take his
plate, he stopped her with a hand over hers.
'Trista,' he said.
'Yes?' Again she gave him that frighteningly blank stare.
Pierce shook his head, removing his hand. 'Never mind.'
She gave him a totally meaningless smile, before she resumed the
interrupted task and carried his plate off to thekitchen.
Later he tried another way of getting through. She responded passionately to
his lovemaking, and he was almost exultant, but afterwards she lay quiet and
still, and when he leaned over and brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek
he found she was crying.
'Trista! What's the matter? I didn't hurt you, did I?'
'No. Nothing's the matter.' She hunched away from him, pulling the blankets
over her shoulders. 'Goodnight.'
He lay back, frowning, until the rhythm of her breathing told him she was
asleep.
'I've got a job,' Trista told him the following week. 'I start next Monday.'
'A job?'
'You always said I'd get bored with housework,' she reminded him.
'Are you bored?'
She shrugged.
'What kind of job is it?' he asked.
'An office job. It's for a charity; they've just got a computer and they need
someone to operate it. It won't pay much, but I'll be doing something useful.'
'A children's charity?' he asked gently.
'No.' Her eyes seemed lifeless. 'Not really. The Family Trust.'
'They do some good work. You'll probably enjoy working for them.'
'Yes.' She gave him a pale travesty of her beautiful smile. 'I hope so.'
He supposed she did-enjoy it as much as she enjoyed anything these days.
She talked about the place and the people in an impersonal way, with no
great enthusiasm, and if anyone asked her about her job she said it was
interesting. When Pierce suggested that they should get some help in the
house now that they both had jobs to go to, she said, 'It isn't necessary,
really. I can cope quite well. It isn't as though we had children.'
Quite sharply, he said, 'Glenda said there's no reason why we shouldn't.'
Trista gave him a smile that seemed almost pitying, and agreed, 'Yes, I
know.'
Their lives settled into a new pattern. He lived with a woman he didn't
recognise any more. She cooked and cleaned and dressed perfectly as
always, though with a new conservatism. And answered his sexual demands
with a kind of mechanical passion that baffled him.
'She's not herself,' he said to Charley one day, in an unguarded moment, and
felt that it was literally true. 'Sometimes I feel as though there's another
person living in her skin.'
'Yes,' Charley sighed. 'I know what you mean. Trista's gone away
somewhere and left this this polite, hollow alien in her place. It's weird.'
One day when they were visiting Pierce's parents, Antonia and Ken were
there with the children. Pierce watched Trista reading a story to Kirsten and
her brother, and quietly nudged Antonia outside with him.
'What do you want?' she asked him. 'It's cold out here!'
'What was Trista like when she came to see you?' he asked. 'The first time
she saw the new baby after you brought her home?'
'All right,' Antonia answered. 'Quite OK. I was surprised.' 'What kind of
OK?'
Antonia shrugged. 'Well ... she didn't cry or anything. She asked to see the
baby, and said how beautiful she was and . . . you know. Like most people.'
'Trista isn't like most people,' Pierce said. 'Did she seem tense ... or
over-animated, perhaps?'
Antonia shook her head. 'I told you, she was perfectly normal.'
'Did she pick the baby up?'
'Um ... no. She was asleep most of the time.'
'Like now. Do me a favour, Toni. Make sure that the baby's awake before
you go, and give it to Trista to hold:
Antonia stared. 'Pierce, are you sure . . .? I don't know that it's wise to play
amateur psychologist.'
'I've got to get through to her, Antonia. Somehow.'
'But surely she's all right, now? She's not depressed any more.'
Pierce groaned. 'You know what she was like before . . . she's nothing like
the Trista we used to know.'
'She's . . . different. More mature. But that was bound to happen, Pierce.
Losing her baby has hastened the process, that's all.'
'Maybe.' Glenda had said something similar: 'She's starting on a new phase
in her life. Sadness does change people. She's picking up well, it's good that
she's got a job . . . she's making a good recovery. Give her time.
But he trusted his own and Charley's instincts over Antonia's and Glenda's
pragmatism.
Antonia did what he asked, handing the baby casually to Trista to look after
while she herded the older two into the car. Pierce watched her face, noticed
her quick glance down at the child, and her smile, a quick, intimate, almost
secret curve of the lips.
He held his breath, but when Antonia returned Trista handed the child over
without a flicker of reluctance, and waved them goodbye with a social smile
pinned to her face.
On the way home, he said to her, 'You must have loved him very much.'
'Who?'
Pierce braced himself, looking straight ahead. 'The father of your baby.'
There was quite a lengthy silence. 'Yes, I suppose I did.'
'You suppose?'
'All right, yes, I did.'
'What was his name?'
'Chris. Christopher.'
'Christopher what?'
'Does it matter?' she asked, moving restlessly in her seat.
'It might. Tell me.'
'Maddock. Christopher Maddock.'
'Do you know where he is now?'
'No. I don't care.'
Catching the faint note of bitterness in her voice, he said, 'What happened, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]