The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  ‘Good morning, Thomas. Alan, are you holding another of your rehearsals this afternoon?’

  Note the anger in the pronoun. Not our rehearsal, or the school’s rehearsal, but mine alone. Strachan’s folly.

  ‘Well, yes, Jane. Don’t want the children to make fools of themselves in front of their adoring parents.’

  ‘I’ll release my class at three-fifteen as usual. Not one minute earlier. They have Common Entrance, you know.’

  Cowplop of antimatter. Plughole of passion. Who cares about your arse-corker of an exam? Can’t you see what happens to them on stage? They blossom. They grow strong and tall. They unfold. Feed their souls, inflame their dreams. We are the first stage of mighty rockets. We deliver the power that launches capsuled youth into the ecstasies of outer space. And then we drop unthanked away.

  ‘The rehearsal starts at three as usual.’

  Six compositions to mark. Fifteen minutes for lunch, five minutes to drive home, five minutes back, it’ll take half the break, I should be handing the work back in fifth period, and there won’t be a letter because the more you want something the less it comes. But it has to come soon so why not today? And if it does then I must open it and unfold the letter within and read the words typed by a secretary whose fingertips should have burned the keyboard but no doubt didn’t.

  Alan Strachan turns his head with an abrupt movement, only to gaze with a distant smile at the distant Downs. Prepare for all eventualities. Original writing requires original readers. Moby-Dick a failure in Melville’s lifetime. Madame Bovary scorned by the critics. Every creative act an act of will. The artist imposes his vision on the world. The familiar vision, the giver of comfort is embraced and welcomed, but the awkward, the indigestible, the strange in taste, causes the herd-mind to flinch from it and brush it aside, with unsent letters and unringing phones.

  And yet, and yet. Byron was twenty-four when he woke up one morning and found himself famous. Scott Fitzgerald was twenty-three.

  I’m late already.

  Today perhaps is the day. Surely it must come. Why else the hard-won scholarship, the invisible years in a school that made me ashamed of my home but offered me no refuge? Why else this solitary exile?

  Maybe the letter’s already in the postman’s van, toiling across Sussex, stopping at every house on the way. The verdict reached two days ago, committed to paper with warm breath, cooling in mail bags, on trains, in vans, seeping into the past, to reach me as history, an echo of a flicker in a filing cabinet in Portland Place. By opening the envelope I create a new present, a return of life, the verdict igniting like a letter bomb, exploding in my brain.

  Yes I’ll dash home after lunch.

  ‘Morning sir.’

  ‘Morning Jack.’

  5

  The taxi is an extravagance but Liz Dickinson is late and she’s feeling nervous and maybe more to the point she’s angry with herself. The piece on children’s bedtimes isn’t done yet. All she’s got is a worked-up version of the American Psychological Association study which claims that seven to eleven year olds aren’t getting enough sleep for their mental needs. She’s rung all her friends to find a child who stays up late and can’t concentrate in class next morning, but so far no takers. The piece will have to be re-angled. Should children be allowed to choose their own bedtime? A few more phone calls after lunch, have the copy in by five.

  Not that there’s anything wrong in snatching a quick hour to have lunch with Guy. He’s so rarely available and they do need to keep in touch for Alice’s sake, given that he’s Alice’s father, not that you’d know it, though he does pay her school fees which at £3,000 a term is decent, and he has her up to town for lunch once in a while.

  The restaurant is in Charlotte Street, down the road from Guy’s office, a typical Guy manoeuvre. She has to cross London, he strolls all of one block. But then as he willingly concedes, he is a supremely selfish man. He concedes it as if it’s part of his genetic coding, like his blue eyes. If you want me, say those frank baby blue eyes, you have to take me as I am. And she does. Or did.

  The taxi costs £11. At least Guy will pay for lunch. As she slams the taxi door behind her Liz says to herself, I will not fuck after lunch. She repeats it to show she means it. I will not fuck after lunch. So she showered this morning and put on pretty underclothes, that’s just thinking ahead, you have to be ready for the unexpected. Guy is not the unexpected. Guy is the shit-souled bastard who broke her heart so badly she vowed never to see him again and has only seen him at roughly six-monthly intervals for the last ten years. Sometimes these meetings have ended in sex, sometimes not. This is a not.

  The restaurant is called Passione. Not a promising start. She checks her watch: dead on one. Why am I always on time for Guy? I’m always late for everyone else. Guy of course is always late for everyone, including me.

  ‘Table for two? Guy Caulder?’

  She orders a glass of white Verdicchio and has drunk all of it by the time he breezes into the restaurant, ten minutes later. Same old look, meaning old beige cords, green jacket, turtleneck sweater, smoothed down hair: like a Spitfire pilot on home leave, a minor public school boy, the type protective mothers used to tag NST, Not Safe in Taxis. Preposterous in this new century. How does he get away with it?

  ‘Liz. Got caught on the phone.’

  A light kiss on the lips. Smell of cigarettes.

  ‘Still smoking?’

  ‘Still giving up.’

  He sits and looks at her, his smiling blue eyes taking in every detail, registering approval. She likes the open sexual admiration, feels herself become desirable under his desiring gaze. Of course she dressed this morning for him.

  ‘You look great, Liz.’

  ‘You look exactly the same. Maybe a little fatter.’

  He grins, pats his belly. You can’t offend Guy, he loves himself too much.

  ‘Too many lunches. I’m thinking of giving up lunch.’

  ‘You’re incapable of giving anything up.’

  ‘True, princess, true. But when two pleasures compete, I surrender the lesser one.’

  Liz refrains from asking what this means. She’s thinking how casually, how proprietorially, he calls her ‘princess’, which is a private term of endearment from long ago, and how much she wants to hear it again. And this despite the fact that Guy is all take and no give, that he destroys her hard-won equilibrium, that she always cries after seeing him again. I must have no self-respect, she thinks.

  ‘So are you going to ask after your daughter?’

  ‘Of course. How is Alice?’

  ‘I’m worried about her. She’s so unmotivated. She doesn’t seem to be interested in any of her subjects at school.’

  ‘She fucking better be. I’m paying ten grand a year for her to be at that fucking school.’

  ‘Please, Guy.’

  She always did hate his swearing. She likes language, more than likes, she reveres language, and flinches from the sheer numbing laziness of expletives. Which Guy knows.

  ‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘I like fucking.’

  ‘Yes. We all know that.’

  ‘I like fucking you.’

  ‘Guy. Stop it. We’re in public.’

  ‘I’m not speaking loudly. Only you can hear me. I’m simply stating a fact. You’re the best fuck I’ve ever had. Why wouldn’t I like it?’

  ‘Look at the menu. If we don’t order soon I’ll be late back, and I have a deadline.’

  Liz fixes her attention on the menu and scans the list of Antipasti but her brain fails to register a single word. She’s feeling the heat between her thighs and repeating her protective mantra and hating Guy for talking about sex. I will not fuck after lunch. I will not fuck after—

  ‘So let’s not have lunch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can eat when we’re alone. We can only fuck when we’re together.’

  ‘Guy, what are you talking about?’

  ‘I have t
he key to a friend’s flat. Round the corner.’

  ‘No. Absolutely no. I came here to talk about Alice. Have a civilized lunch. If it wasn’t for Alice I would never want to see you again.’

  ‘Okay.’ You can’t offend Guy. ‘The mushroom risotto is good.’ Actually his total insensitivity is rather restful.

  ‘I’m not hungry enough for risotto.’

  Mistake.

  ‘You’re not hungry?’

  ‘Just not hungry enough for risotto.’

  ‘So why don’t we go to my friend’s flat?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘How can you say that? You’re not interested in me in any way at all apart from sexually, you never ask about Alice till I remind you. You’re not a good person, Guy.’

  ‘I’m not following this. You don’t want to have sex with me because I’m only interested in you sexually?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else should I be interested in? Your mind? Your personality?’

  ‘That would make a change.’

  ‘So how about we give half an hour to talking about your personality, and half an hour for a fuck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a hypocrite, Liz.’

  ‘Oh, it’s my fault, is it?’

  ‘You know that if I kept quiet about the sex, and talked all about you, and only got to the sex bit later, you’d be just fine about it. My problem is I’m honest.’

  ‘Your problem is you’ve never worked out that people don’t like being used.’

  ‘Who’s using who? I love sex. You love sex. Don’t deny it. I know how you fuck. Why do you think I love sex with you so much? Because you’re the only woman I know who loves her body and loves the pleasure your body gives you. You’re a natural. Christ, just thinking about it makes me hard.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘So I want to use you. Don’t you want to use me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Give me your hand.’

  ‘I will do no such thing.’

  ‘Put your hand here and look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to fuck.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I dare you.’

  He’s like a child. She holds out her hand and he puts it in his lap under the table, and she looks into his eyes. He is very hard.

  ‘I do not want to fuck.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Why am I getting all this pressure? You must have some girlfriend you can call.’

  ‘None of them fuck like you.’

  Liz begins to feel helpless. The sheer shamelessness of his demands disarms her. That, and the feel of the hard ridge in his lap. Maybe it’s all as simple as he pretends.

  ‘How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what’s the problem? You know you like it.’

  This is true. Secretly, humiliatingly true. She’s never admitted it to him, and never will, but only with this untrustworthy shit has she ever achieved an orgasm. Her body remembers sex with Guy far too well. She is shivering with longing.

  ‘I hate you, Guy Caulder. I want you out of my life.’

  He interprets this correctly.

  ‘I’ll leave a big tip.’

  The friend’s flat is indeed round the corner, above a wine shop in Percy Street. Guy finds the key and fumbles at the lock, while Liz shuts down all mental operations, not wanting to hear the waiting accusatory voice. Instead, she anticipates the look and feel of his body.

  The street door open, he goes directly up the narrow stairs without a word, and she follows. The flat is on the second floor. The master bedroom is small, with a big bed and a wardrobe mirror to one side. She stands looking round wondering who lives here, some man, no sign of a woman’s things, the duvet cover blue-and-white stripe, cotton-linen mix, very Conran Shop. Then he’s pushing her back onto the bed, kneeling over her, still fully dressed, sliding one hand between her legs.

  Why so easy with Guy and so difficult with all other men?

  Later. The sound of water in the bathroom basin. Guy humming some half-familiar tune. The rush of the cistern. The clunk of a door.

  Guy looking down at her, blue eyes smiling, pulling on his pants.

  ‘You love it, don’t you?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘No. Not like you.’

  Only with you. Not with the gentle men, the considerate men, the men who ask what I want and listen when I answer. Only with a man who uses my body for his pleasure and breaks my heart.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to hurry you.’

  ‘It’s okay. I have to get back too.’

  She goes to the bathroom, finds a bidet, flinches at the cold ceramic against her hot skin. Pulls on discarded clothing. A quick check in the mirror tells her she looks like a woman who’s just been fucked.

  ‘We should do lunch more often,’ he says.

  ‘We didn’t do lunch.’

  ‘I’m really going to have to run.’

  ‘Let me get my shoes on for Christ’s sake.’

  Out into the street, where he leaves her. She checks her watch. They’ve spent barely half an hour together, not enough for lunch. Sex was all he had scheduled, was all he wanted. Knowing Guy he probably had a sandwich earlier.

  She walks down Charlotte Street to the corner of Goodge Street and stands waiting for a taxi. There’s a sharp wind, it makes her eyes sting. She does not cry.

  6

  The rain has passed by the time Laura sets off for work. She drives the old Volvo down green lanes, the trees cut close on either side to the height of the highest truck. Overhead the branches are vaulted like the aisles of a cathedral. Through lime-green tunnels to the Newhaven road, through the straggling village of Edenfield, past the church and the shop and the pub, her handbag on the seat beside her, the letter in the handbag. She has made a resolution. She will not reply until she has talked to Henry.

  So now as she follows her familiar route to Edenfield Place her mind is busy not thinking about the letter. Instead she thinks about her nine-year-old daughter Carrie, who has got herself into a tangle over her friendships. Carrie’s best friend Naomi won’t talk to her because Carrie was paired on an art project with Tessa and Carrie and Tessa went on with their art project in break. Now Naomi won’t even look at her when Carrie tries to make up and won’t answer when she speaks to her and Carrie is frantic with misery. Not that she shows it or talks about it. Only her eyes red from secret crying and her little face white from lack of sleep admit that her soul is desolated. Last night after she was supposed to be tucked up it all came hiccupping out, the dreadful tale of unjust punishment and love denied.

  ‘I’m not Tessa’s friend, Tessa’s friend, it’s only for the project, I had to do it, do it, why does she hate me? I ask her why, her why, she won’t talk to me, I try to be nice, but she won’t talk, won’t talk.’

  Is this bullying? Should Laura alert her daughter’s class teacher? How do you order one little girl to be friends with another little girl? Laura held Carrie in her arms and told her it wasn’t her fault and people just do get jealous sometimes and at least it means Naomi wants to be her friend because it’s only when you really love someone that you hurt them this way.

  ‘I know that,’ said Carrie, nine years old but wise to the ways of the world. ‘I just wish she’d talk to me.’

  Laura turns into the park gates and down the long drive to the immense and ugly house. Until recently Edenfield Place was considered absurd, its sprawling mass of turrets and towers assembled with a deliberate asymmetry, a Victorian fantasy of the middle ages created for a pharmacist grown rich on patent medicines. But a century has gone by, the false past has become the real past, and now the Gothic Revival style is admired and preserved. Edenfield Place’s listing has been promoted to Grade I. Its third-generation owner, William Holland, Lord Edenfield, finds himsel
f obliged to maintain the acres of carved stone and woodwork, the tiles and the marble inlay, the stained glass, the mosaics, and the Victorian ironwork. The original source of the Holland fortune, no longer generously laced with opiates, no longer enriches its patent holder; and the present Lord Edenfield, known to all as Billy, finds that as the prestige of his estate rises, his ability to support it falls.

  Laura Broad, formerly of Bernard Quaritch Antiquarian Books, is one small part of the survival strategy. The library at Edenfield Place houses a famous collection of travel books and maps, established by the family patriarch and enlarged by his son George. No one knows the value of the collection, but it is supposed that its hundreds of shelves bear a treasure that can be exchanged for hard cash. Laura’s task is to catalogue and to estimate.

  So far she has unearthed one golden nugget: a rare first edition of the Peregrinaçam by Mendes Pinto, one of the first Europeans to travel in Japan. She carried it excitedly to Billy Holland, who said, ‘How much?’ She guessed £30,000. ‘Not enough,’ he replied. She has raised his expectations too high with her stories of First Folios selling for millions.

  She parks by the west wing and goes in by the servants’ entrance. Pat Kelly the housekeeper sees her pass by down the passage.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Please, Pat. You’re an angel.’

  Laura works the bank of switches that turn on the library lights, and bay after bay emerges from the gloom. The long hall has only one window, at the far end, but it is enormous: wide and arched and crowded with stone tracery. Above it the intricate scrollwork of the carved wood walls rises to a hammerbeam roof. The floor is a riot of inlaid marble, a flowering meadow that is cold under foot.

  She settles down in her work corner, opens the hard-bound lined notebook in which she is listing the results of her search. The first rapid trawl is done: ahead the slow labour, volume by volume, shelf by shelf. She is doing the job for a finder’s fee of four per cent. On total sales of, say, a quarter million this would net her £10,000. Surely in a library of this size she can rack up at least that. You need luck, of course. A page annotated by Daniel Defoe. A previously unidentified account of a voyage that turns out to be by a crew member on the Beagle. The first Lord Edenfield bought on impulse, in batches, some of which have never been broken up. There is no catalogue, only files of letters from booksellers and intermediaries.