The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  Jack says nothing as they get into the car and drive up the village street. Then as they turn into the home lane, he says, ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, Jack.’

  ‘Do you always know what everyone’s thinking?’

  ‘Me?’ Henry laughs at the suggestion. ‘I hardly even know what I’m thinking myself. I’m useless.’

  ‘No. Really.’

  The car pulls into their short drive and they both get out.

  ‘Better?’ says Henry.

  Jack nods.

  ‘I feel like I’m whizzing.’

  The odd thing is that Henry feels like he’s whizzing too. They go into the house together and Laura’s on the phone to Diana having a post mortem on Glyndebourne. She looks up and meets Henry’s eyes. ‘Crisis over,’ he says. Jack gives her a grin and a little wave of his hand.

  Henry settles down to read the Sunday paper but finds his eyes slide over the print without taking in the meaning of the words. Something about the events of the day so far has had a greater effect on him than he can explain. It’s not as if his own circumstances have changed. One grows weary of narrow horizons.

  Other people’s lives. Other people’s unending struggles. And yet the images that endure, both real and imagined, are not the ones you expect. A man in a stripy jumper aglow with adoration of his newborn baby girl. Jack walking on walls and below only clouds. Laura coming towards him across the lawns of Glyndebourne, so different and so beautiful.

  Where are they now, the happy moments?

  The little rector said something so provocative, what was it? Yes. Sin is unhappiness. As if we get a choice in the matter. There’s a photograph of Tony Blair on the front page of the Sunday Times, he’s holding a mug that has a picture of his other three children on it. ‘Baby Leo is gorgeous,’ says Blair. And further down, these words: ‘The thing you forget is how tiny they are.’

  Henry tries to remember Jack when he was new born. No picture comes to mind, but he recovers a true feeling. He’s holding Jack just as the Dogman held his baby, and he’s feeling with overwhelming intensity how fragile this little creature is, and how he will do anything, sacrifice anything, suffer anything to protect him and keep him from harm and make him believe that the world he has so recently entered is a place of kindness.

  I should have found you sooner.

  Sobbing in the stable in the dark. But that’s over now. Whizzing now.

  51

  Monday morning, and from eight o’clock onwards the filter lane off the main road is solid with cars turning into the school. Mostly the mothers do kiss’n’drop, not even shifting their cars’ automatic gears into neutral for the few seconds it takes to disgorge another blue-blazered child into the milling mass. Liz Dickinson, whose little Renault is not automatic, pulls over into a space by the dining hall and parks. Alice spots Alan Strachan over by the school entrance. He’s clutching a brown envelope.

  ‘Ask him to come for supper this evening,’ Alice says as they get out of the car.

  ‘He won’t want to come again so soon.’

  ‘Yes he will.’

  Alan Strachan gives them a wave and comes forward to meet them. He holds out the brown envelope. He’s blushing.

  ‘My play,’ he says. ‘Give it a glance if you have time. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s really all a kind of metaphor.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ says Liz.

  ‘No rush.’

  Alice tugs at her arm.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Alice wants you to come to supper again.’

  She speaks in a low voice because there are children passing near by. This makes it seem like a guilty secret.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Alan Strachan replies simply.

  ‘He could come this evening,’ says Alice. ‘You could, couldn’t you, sir?’

  ‘I could if that suits your mother. But just about any evening would do for me.’

  ‘Why not?’ says Liz. ‘Come round some time after seven. I’ll have read this.’

  ‘It’s not suitable for children, by the way,’ he says. ‘Or anyone else, probably.’

  Alice goes off to join the others for morning assembly. Liz returns with the brown envelope to her car.

  She drives back down the main road thinking of all that she has to do today, knowing that before doing any of it she will read Alan Strachan’s play. She made the offer freely, but the truth is she’s afraid of reading it. She likes Alan, but may not like his play. What then? Not only the awkward matter of what she says to him; more troubling is how it may change what she thinks of him. Alan Strachan has been occupying a particular place in her mind ever since Friday evening, that place where secret hopes gather and breed. She has done nothing to encourage it, but nor can she stop it. He’s so sweet to Alice, of course. But surely he’s too young. And more troubling still, too unsure of himself. She compares him in her mind’s eyes with Guy, and he looks like a boy. He has none of Guy’s self assurance, his savoir-faire—

  This is all about sex. She trips over the truth with a little jump of shock. All these adjectives, young, unsure, they’re euphemisms for unsexy. She likes Alan Strachan very much, she’s grateful to him, but he doesn’t excite her. Not in the way that Guy does.

  What’s wrong with me? Guy’s a dead end. There’s nothing for me there. He doesn’t love me. All he wants me for is sex.

  It seems so unfair that the best sex is with the worst men. Or worse than unfair, a sickness in her. But why? Is it that I feel somewhere deep down that I don’t deserve pleasure? I can have it, but I have to pay the price in pain. That would be so sick.

  She tries to be truthful with herself. Maybe she is a masochist, but it doesn’t feel that way, it really doesn’t. She’d rather be with a man who loves her and treats her with respect. So why not a sweet boy like Alan Strachan, with his play that’s not suitable for children? It’s not as if the suitors are lining up outside her bedroom door.

  She tries to imagine sex with Alan. She can make the pictures in her head, but she can’t make them feel real. In any scenario she creates she finds she’s the one who initiates each stage of the proceedings. ‘Do you want to stay for coffee, Alan? Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to stay the night?’ At no point does Alan take control. Only her imagination, but everything she knows about him so far tells her this is the way it will be. He will seek her permission for every move.

  What’s wrong with that? For Christ’s sake do I want to be raped? What is this caveman shit?

  No, not rape. Guy doesn’t rape me. He desires me, without hesitation or shame. He puts my hand on his hard cock so I can feel his desire. The choice is mine, I don’t have to have sex with him. He just makes me want to. He makes it easy and natural. All I have to do is not resist. Let him carry me away. Surrender.

  Surrendering is so fucking sexy.

  So there it is. I’m screwed. In the non-physical sense. This is my life choice. Friendly fumbles with nice guys or bang my brains out with bastards. The whole set-up is one big evolutionary error. There’s the boys with their Madonna-whore complex, and here am I with the girl version. Nice guy-stud. Be sensitive to me all day and fuck me stupid all night.

  Dream on.

  As she reaches the Edenfield roundabout she remembers the rector, about whom she has a guilty conscience. She kept meaning to phone him all day yesterday but somehow never got round to it. The piece as it appeared in the Mail on Sunday was the usual stitch-up, you had to admire the professionalism, nothing in it untrue, the sure instinct for the guts of a provocative story, but nevertheless a total distortion. It had never occurred to her when she submitted her copy that there was a story in the rector’s easygoing views on faith. She had written up the dog funeral, as requested. But some bright spark in Derry Street had spotted the hidden treasure and got to work on the support quotes, and you can’t lay a glove on him. Stupid of her to think she could sell a happy pet story. The Mail doesn’t do happiness, it does anger. That’s what they teach thei
r subs to find, to shape, to sharpen: stories that goad their readers into outrage. A vicar who doesn’t believe in God feeds the ever-hungry beast.

  The rector will be upset by it, of course. Instead of driving on home to Lewes she turns down the Newhaven road and heads into Edenfield. She will seek him out and try to explain what happened. Not just to excuse herself. She owes him some redress.

  Then she’s passing the church and there he is, his arms full of leaves, entering the open door of the porch.

  By the time she’s parked he’s disappeared inside the church. The dark nave seems at first sight to be empty. Then she sees him in a side aisle, removing flowers from vases, a black bin liner in one hand.

  He turns towards her, and for a moment he seems confused. Then he gives a nod of recognition.

  ‘Just replacing the flowers.’

  ‘I came to say sorry about the piece in the paper,’ says Liz.

  ‘Well, it did come as something of a surprise.’

  ‘It wasn’t what I wrote at all. They changed everything. I feel terrible. I know what these people can do. I should have been more careful.’

  The rector picks out fresh cuttings to arrange in the vases.

  ‘These people?’ he says, his gaze on the mass of dark leaves.

  ‘Well, me too,’ says Liz. He’s not angry, he’s just puzzled and hurt. ‘Will it make things difficult for you?’

  ‘If it does,’ says the rector, ‘I have only myself to blame for that.’

  ‘Oh no! It’s not you. Some creep on the newspaper made the whole thing up. It’s a classic bolt-on job.’

  ‘The words they attribute to me are the kind of thing I say. I’m willing to accept that I said them.’

  You said them to me, thinks Liz. And I passed them down the line. My contribution to this jewel of British journalism. Befriend and betray.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘As I recall, your name wasn’t on the article.’

  ‘No, they had that much decency. But I’ll be paid. I’ll give the money to charity. Whatever charity you like.’

  He moves on to the next vase. Liz finds herself looking at the stained-glass window above the altar: Jesus with his arms reached out on either side. In glory, not in crucifixion.

  ‘What is a classic bolt-on job?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s when you have only one part of a story and you need to build it up. Suppose a politician says he wants to help one-parent families. You don’t ring up single mothers and get them to say how great it is that someone wants to help them. That’s not a story. You ring up a few well-known pro-marriage lobbyists and get them to say the politician’s failing to help married couples. Then you run the story as Anger at Attack on the Family.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘Yes, it is all a bit strange.’

  ‘You mean they actually create a row where there wasn’t one?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘People love to read this kind of stuff, believe it or not.’

  ‘No, I believe it. The part I don’t understand is how they can write it. It seems to me to be a kind of lie.’

  ‘I know. It’s hard to explain. It’s something that happens to you when you work on a newspaper. You want a story so badly you just lose sight of the fact that you’re trampling all over people. And if you ever do think of it, you tell yourself they deserve it. The politicians, the celebrities, the crooks.’

  ‘The vicars.’

  ‘Well, that’s where it goes wrong.’

  ‘Not really. Whoever wrote that article about me must have thought I deserved what I was getting. A vicar who doesn’t believe in God. So you see, I don’t blame him. Or you. I blame myself.’

  ‘Please. It just makes me feel so much worse when you say that. Honestly, these people are vermin. They don’t deserve your compassion. Nor do I.’

  ‘Of course you do, my dear. As I deserve yours.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do? I could write my own piece about you. Say all the things you’d like to have said.’

  ‘No, no. Enough is enough. And anyway, it’s too late now.’

  ‘Too late? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve offered my resignation.’

  Liz is appalled.

  ‘You can’t resign! Not over this! They won’t accept it.’

  ‘The Bishop was grateful. He was in a most awkward position. And I am almost seventy years old. New blood will be an excellent thing.’

  ‘So you’re going to go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I shall retire. I shall live with my sister. She has kindly offered me a room in her flat in Ealing.’

  ‘A room in Ealing?’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s for the best, you know. My position in the church has been peculiar for many years now. I described what you journalists do as a kind of lie, but of course it’s my life that has been a kind of lie. Now there’s no more need for lies. I can be grateful for that.’

  He gathers up more flowers and moves away from her, towards the altar. Only they’re not flowers, they’re leaves. In amongst the leaves are some tiny buds. It strikes Liz then how strange it is, at the height of springtime, to bring plants into the church that are so far from flowering.

  ‘What is it you’ve picked?’

  ‘Roses,’ he says. ‘They’re from my garden.’

  He indicates the front pews. Both pews are piled high with cut rose branches. Far more than could ever be required to decorate a church.

  ‘You must have a big garden.’

  ‘Not very big. This is all of it.’

  He looks towards her, and for the briefest instant she sees in his eyes a terrible desolation. She looks down, ashamed to be the witness to his pain; ashamed to have been its cause.

  ‘It doesn’t do to become too attached to things,’ he says. ‘But it seems I have after all become…’

  He falls silent. Liz looks up. The rector has his head bowed as if in prayer. There comes a soft sighing sound. He takes out a handkerchief and presses it first to one eye, then to the other.

  ‘I think you had better go, my dear.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  She wants to say more. She wants forgiveness. And this too shames her, that he is the one in pain, and she the one who seeks comfort. So she goes.

  At the end of the aisle she turns and looking back sees the rector illuminated by the coloured light of Christ in glory. The Christ who had to suffer crucifixion to get the glory. This is the lie, she thinks, the great Christian story, that after the suffering comes the redemption. Maybe for Jesus, but not for most. After the suffering comes a room in a flat in Ealing. All the rest is just a classic bolt-on job.

  52

  All through the first three lessons of the day Jack finds it hard to concentrate. When break comes Toby will want the news. Daddy says tell Toby what happened and he’ll get it, but he doesn’t know Toby. Toby goes off in ways you can never tell in advance. Maybe he’ll say they have to send another letter asking for much more money now they know the Dogman is afraid. I won’t do that. Toby can send the letter himself.

  Then what? Then I have to go around with fat Dan Chamberlain and barmy Will Guest. The three losers. But at least I won’t get sent away to a prison school.

  Jack’s night of terror has had this benefit: he now knows there are worse things than losing the favour of Toby Clore.

  When the bell rings for morning break Jimmy Hall has a random fit and starts shouting at people for no reason. He makes Peter Mackie look for his blazer even though he’s looked for it a hundred times, and when Peter Mackie just stands there goggling round him like a zombie Jimmy Hall gets so stressy he actually stamps his foot.

  ‘The rules say you wear your blazer! So you will wear your blazer!’

  Then he makes everyone carry chairs to the barn.

  ‘But sir it’s our break. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Not fair? Who s
aid it was fair? Nothing’s fair, Jason. Justice standeth far off and truth is fallen in the street.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  When at last Jack and Toby and Angus and Richard gather by the tennis courts half the break is gone. Jack bursts straight out with his pre-prepared story.

  ‘I posted the letter but the Dogman saw me so me and my dad went to talk to him and he asked us not to tell about what he did.’

  ‘I still don’t know what it is he did,’ says Richard Adderley resentfully.

  Toby is watching Jack with his cool unmoving eyes.

  ‘And?’

  And what? Jack has no idea what to add. So he adds the detail that has lodged most vividly in his memory.

  ‘And he’s got a new baby. All he can think about is this new baby. And he’s got two little girls too. And this new baby.’

  ‘The Dogman’s got a new baby.’

  ‘Yes. Really new. Small.’

  Toby absorbs this information in silence.

  ‘Well,’ he says at last, speaking slowly, ‘I think that’s sad. I think babies are sad. What do you think, Angus? Do you like babies?’

  ‘No,’ says Angus. ‘Who said I did?’

  ‘You don’t go round destroying when you’ve got a baby.’

  In some part of Jack’s mind he grasps that Toby has no use for a domesticated Dogman.

  ‘He was wearing a woolly jumper,’ he says.

  ‘A woolly jumper? What sort of woolly jumper?’

  ‘Striped. In lots of colours.’

  Toby Clore shakes his head.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘That is so sad it’s almost gay.’

  His gaze shifts, to reach across the nets to the main terrace. There stands Jimmy Hall, overseeing the morning break, his hands clasped behind his back, his anger still evident in his abrupt changes of posture.

  ‘Justice standeth far off,’ says Toby.

  ‘The Dogman doesn’t make any money out of his farm.’ Jack pursues his advantage. ‘He says everyone hates him.’

  Instinct guides him. With each additional item of information the Dogman’s prestige dwindles. Toby Clore has no interest in persecuting a loser. And as it happens he believes he has found a new prophet in an unlikely form. The mismatch between outward appearance and inner rage appeals to his taste for the unpredictable.