‘Is Merle the Dean?’
‘What’s this got to do with Merle? The Dean is Janka Foord, the physicist. Didn’t you meet her when you arrived?’
‘There was some reception I was supposed to go to.’
‘Buckie is nailing the Dean and everyone knows, so she can’t be seen to take up his cause. You’re really lucky, because apparently he has been making noises about dangerous weapons, criminal damage and assault.’
‘If he wanted to press charges, wouldn’t he go to the police?’
Terence laughed. ‘You don’t understand this place. He’d sue. He’s been talked out of it for now. I think Merle had a word, but you still need to make a case for diminished responsibility, something like that. You’ve got to go to see the Dean.’
‘But I wasn’t diminished, I was drunk.’
‘Don’t tell them that. The Dean’s talked to Merle. They’ve put together a pretty good explanation. You’ll have to pay for the car repairs, though, and Buckie won’t have you next door. They’ve moved you.’
‘Where to?’
‘Lucky again. A history professor has gone on sabbatical, leaving one of the college’s nicest houses empty.’
‘A house?’
‘A very small one. It’s old and rickety but it’s up on the hill.’
‘I didn’t know Littlefield had a hill.’
‘It’s a trick hill. You can’t see it and you don’t know you’re climbing it, but at the top, you find yourself above town.’
‘Above the trees? That doesn’t sound too bad. Would you be able to help me move my stuff?’
‘They’ve done that.’
‘They?’
‘The college.’
‘Moved my things without asking?’
‘Their apartment, their house, their hill.’
‘Their axe, too.’
‘Exactly. That’s where you’re luckiest of all – their axe.’
A few days before the axe shattered Buckie Buckingham’s windscreen, someone had suggested to Dean Foord that she might not be his only lover. Before she could confront him, he had disappeared to his wife’s house in Connecticut, leaving his car in the garage and a letter addressed by hand to ‘Janka’, which he nudged under her office door. The Dean was full of forgiveness as she tore the envelope open but the letter was only a formal account of what he referred to as ‘Miss Clough’s assault’, demanding action and recompense, and placing the matter in her hands. So when Juliet arrived in her office in January, Janka Foord was not in the mood to do Buckie Buckingham any favours.
‘You must have been under a lot of stress,’ she began encouragingly. ‘Did the department give you too many students?’
‘No.’
‘What about your supervisor … been working you hard?’
‘No, not at all. If anything, not hard enough.’
‘I see.’ This girl did not look well. She was sallow and watery, and possibly a bit slow. ‘And your health?’
The Dean’s kind voice elicited a full account of her condition and the forthcoming operation. Juliet gave her permission to request a statement from her doctor: the severity of her pain, the level of medication, the lack of familial support – it all added up.
The Dean knew more and wanted to be told. ‘Any recent, um, trauma? Anything else that might have contributed to your being so … sensitive?’
‘No.’
Dean Foord paused and then admitted that she knew that Juliet had recently lost a brother in a terrorist attack; Merle had mentioned it. She received Juliet’s permission to add this information to her report.
Teaching began immediately. ‘No such thing here as adjustment,’ Terence explained. ‘On, on!’
‘The land of moving on,’ Juliet said, now in the habit of competing with him in the field of pronouncement. ‘They’re so good at it that they even clear up after themselves.’
‘Don’t be patronising, especially as they’ve just cleared up after you.’
Juliet meant it; she was grateful and impressed.
Carlo’s hospital was near Fred’s bank and they sometimes met for a drink in one of the City’s cellar bars, which were raucous for an hour or two at the end of the day and then deserted. It was eight o’clock, and they were almost alone.
‘I’ll buy another round,’ offered Carlo, ‘but will you go? My back’s killing me.’
‘What have you done?’
‘Let my boyfriend give me another massage.’
‘Can’t you say no?’
‘He’d be hurt. Besides, he needs the money.’
‘You pay your boyfriend?’
Carlo ignored him. ‘The other night, we were supposed to go out for dinner but I fell asleep in my chair and you know what? He went out, bought stuff and made soup.’
‘Did you pay him for the soup as well?’
Carlo pushed a note into Fred’s hand and told him to fuck off to the bar. He wanted to dwell on that evening, how Jonathan had fed him and worried about him and how, for the first time, he had spent the night with a man without having sex.
Fred returned with two pints of bitter – something they only drank when together because it was what they had drunk in Allnorthover – and changed the subject.
‘I’ve got to move out.’
‘Why?’
‘At the last co-op meeting, the committee voted to expel me because they thought it was immoral of me to take advantage of cheap housing when I earned so much.’
‘But half of them are raking it in, paying ten pounds a week rent and saving up for a deposit.’
‘Which is what I’ve done, only without realising it, well not completely. Anyway I had a look and they’re right and while I’m working for the bank, I can get a good deal on a mortgage and prices are dropping, so –’
‘The end of Khyber Road. What will Jules say?’
‘She won’t mind.’
‘She’ll be back in June.’
‘And I’ll have a new house for us by then.’
‘You want her to live with you there as well?’
Fred didn’t know what to say; he hadn’t imagined anything else.
In Littlefield, the same snow was on the ground. It lined paths and roads in scuffed slabs, and hid the fact that the world would be green again. The students returned, the snow remained, and Juliet was content. She spent several hours each day avoiding getting on with her work but there was still enough time left in which to do it. She slept well and wrote calm, cheerful postcards to her friends.
This life was simple. Her little house was warmed by hot air blown through grates in the skirting boards, and an open fire for which she found a pile of wood in a shed. The two compact downstairs rooms were filled with antique couches and bureaux. What space was left between bookshelves was hung with samplers, botanical prints and posters for county fairs. Feathers and seed-heads were tucked into their dusty frames. In the kitchen, orange and green gourds sank into themselves on the windowsill and three shrivelled corncobs, once red, white and blue, were nailed to the back of the door. Once Juliet might have taken them down. Now she accepted their presence as a sign that this was not her home.
‘I have no home,’ she said, more often than she knew, until Terence grew annoyed.
‘Your family seat?’
‘It’s still there, yes, but I couldn’t go back. Not to live. It’s not waiting.’
‘And why should it? You talk about your parents as if they were employed to keep the dust down.’
‘Hardly. They couldn’t wait to get away – ignored Christmas and set off to do exactly what they wanted.’
‘So?’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We’re all going to do just what we want, which for me means being this far from them.’
‘Was Christmas that bad?’
‘Awful, but I learnt a thing or two and I reminded someone.’
‘Of what?’
‘That he wants me.’
‘And do you want him?’
&
nbsp; ‘How should I know?’
Terence laughed.
‘No, really,’ said Juliet, ‘how do you, I mean … how should I know?’
Juliet returned to the hospital to discuss her progress and the doctor proposed a second scan. To Juliet, it all looked the same as before – clouds and shadows.
‘Why does it all keep moving?’ she asked.
‘Because you keep breathing.’
‘When you do the next operation, I’ll be in and out in a day like before, right?’
‘Not this time. You will require a fairly large incision and afterwards several days’ bed rest; no lifting. Do you have someone to look after you?’
Juliet explained that no, she was alone and that it had been a difficult year what with the death of her brother in a terrorist attack, and eventually they agreed that she should remain on the hormone treatment for another five months and have the operation once she got home.
‘I have no more pain thanks to your marvellous pills, perhaps I won’t need the operation after all.’
‘You can’t take them indefinitely and the pain will come back. You need to address this through surgery.’
She would remember that first month back in Littlefield as a time of peace. She had worked and slept, and felt quiet and kind. Her days were routine and her conversations, other than those with Terence, were functional. She wrote another chapter of her dissertation.
One day in early February, Jacob Dart knocked on her office door.
‘How did you find me?’ God but he is the loveliest thing on this earth. All the heat in her body collected in her face.
He shrugged.
‘Have you come here to see me?’
He smiled.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘With you?’
That someone would act, would risk acting, for her. That Jacob would act. She stood up, crossed the room and put her arms round his neck. A moment passed and then his arms were round her.
‘With you,’ he said, kissing her eyes and her mouth and covering her ears, ‘I’ve come to stay. With you.’
Clara arrived at the back of the Shipping Office and as her arms were full of a wrapped painting kicked at the door, trying not to think of Jacob as she did so. The door was padlocked and her kicking at it set off an alarm.
Tania appeared from round the outside of the building. ‘Oh, it’s you. I’ve only just got here, haven’t had a chance to unlock. I thought it must be Jacob forgetting his keys as usual. He’s still camping out here; some of the time, anyway. I was getting quite worried – all that coughing – but he must have found somewhere warmer, haven’t seen him for weeks.’
‘But what if he’s in there?’
‘You mean dead and half eaten by rats?’ Tania laughed and Clara felt ridiculous so laughed too. In the gallery, she unwrapped the painting.
‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Tania. ‘It’s him, absolutely.’ She kissed Clara on the cheek, ‘Congratulations!’
A bell rang and Tania went to bring through Barbara Dart, dressed in her usual finely tuned palette of blues. I would like to paint her as well, Clara thought; it would be like painting a painting.
Tania chatted on: ‘I haven’t seen you since all those Christmas parties. How was Cornwall?’
‘Fab,’ said Barbara, not looking up from the picture. ‘I went to this dear cottage we’ve rented for years. I’m thinking of buying it.’
Clara was nervous. ‘The face only coheres when observed from a particular angle,’ she explained. ‘It dictates the position from which it is looked at; otherwise it refuses to be seen.’
‘He is a powerful subject, no? Difficult.’ Barbara became still. She had seen him. Here was a Jacob who had withdrawn himself from her years ago. ‘It’s interesting,’ she said and then, ‘but it doesn’t work.’
Clara did not understand. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘It doesn’t succeed, as a portrait. It’s not him.’
‘Other people think it is.’
‘Which other people?’
Clara floundered. ‘Tania, you think it’s him, don’t you? You said so.’
‘It’s all so subjective …’
‘No it’s not,’ said Clara and Barbara together, and braced themselves to resolve the matter.
‘I can’t do it again.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to, and I’m sorry. It was my idea but it hasn’t worked. I will pay you the rest of the fee, of course.’
‘Please don’t,’ snapped Clara, already wrapping up the painting.
Barbara made a note to send Clara a cheque in a month’s time.
‘What does Jacob think?’ Tania wondered.
He had not asked to see the painting while it was being done; nor had he discussed it with Barbara.
Barbara looked towards the back of the building.
‘He’s not there,’ Clara said, enjoying Barbara’s surprise. ‘Isn’t that right, Tania?’
‘Haven’t seen him for days.’
Barbara paused and thought and when she spoke again, her voice was reinforced with calm: ‘He does keep odd hours. Have you looked, Tania?’
‘I didn’t like to and he’s so often been gone before.’
‘Perhaps we ought to.’
Tania found herself giving Barbara the key.
It was snowing again in Littlefield as Juliet led Jacob back to the house on the hill. They slipped and crept through the soft white world as if they were about to do something ridiculous or dangerous. The steps up to the house were glazed in ice, and Juliet had forgotten to sprinkle them with grit. Jacob climbed the packed snow to one side, stamping footholds with his boots, and then reached down for Juliet. With the determination of someone who conserved their strength for such moments, he lifted her up and into his arms and held her like a bride as she fumbled the key, such was her hurry to unlock the door.
EIGHTEEN
For a while, the talk in the city was of neither expansion nor decline. Although there were things that had to be played out, this was not an age of commitment and so it could not become one of risk. There was nothing to fear, even when talk of war became war; for London, this was more or less the same thing. London did not know the people who went to fight. They did not live in the city, but in barrack towns and other, smaller ports.
This war entered the language as military acronyms, sporting analogies, government patois and the variable pronunciation of Middle Eastern place names. Around the time the first jokes were coined, people stocked up on mineral water and candles. They watched the news, cried by their sleeping children and talked about moving to the country. It passed.
Money was being spent in unlikely places. Khyber Road was awarded a twinkling slick of tarmac edged with yellow lines, and a red brick pavement. The last corrugated-iron fences were replaced with hoardings and the illustrated promise to rebuild. Every other house in the street had been renovated, and someone had planted three saplings, which remained and grew.
‘Our street is being coloured in,’ Fred said to Juliet, whom he phoned from his office thirty floors above the river. ‘And there are growing things. Thank god I’m off.’
‘You mean it’s no longer picturesque?’
‘You should see this view.’
‘Tell me about it, please. We’ve got more snow. Jacob left the shovel out and it disappeared into a drift, so we can’t even dig our way to the car.’
‘It’s getting dark already, and the sky is sort of plum coloured. Everything else down there is bony, chalky, I don’t know. I can’t really say, but it looks wonderful.’
Juliet knew exactly what it looked like and almost said yes when Fred asked her to come home.
‘I’m going to have five bedrooms in Botolph Square,’ he said. ‘That’s more than twice as many as Khyber Road. Come home.’
I am home, thought Juliet that evening as she drowsed by the fire in the house on the hill. She had come in sneezing and Jacob had directed her to an armchair, tucked her up under a
quilt and built a fire. He made hot toddies and read to her, stopping now and then to urge her to drink up.
‘Do you like the cinnamon stick? I had to go to Mount South to get that.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘And the nutmeg? It has to be freshly grated. I grated it.’
‘Freshly,’ she said, meaning to tease him because he sounded so sweetly anxious, only Jacob did not seem to get the joke. He read on until she fell asleep, then carried her to bed.
He liked to watch Juliet sleeping and sometimes stayed up all night to do so. When awake, she toughened. Only at Christmas when she had arrived like a visitation, in a fever, had he believed that he held all of her and that was why he had come to Littlefield. After his mother’s second stroke, which ought to have killed her, Jacob and Sally had installed her in a private nursing home, which had been paid for by the sale of her bungalow and the advance on Jacob’s next book. He had handed the sum over to the home intact.
The arrival of Jacob Dart, the author of Foucault’s Egg, caused a stir in Littlefield. Merle asked Juliet what he was working on now, but Juliet did not know because she had not asked. One day when Jacob answered the telephone, Merle elicited the information that he was writing a book of essays called The Disappointed Bridge, about the self-limiting connections between modes of cultural theory.
‘Jacob’s new project sounds fascinating,’ Merle said to Juliet.
‘It does?’
‘The disappointed bridge! So clever.’
‘Isn’t that a joke about piers?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Piers?’
Merle switched subjects by rummaging in her bag. ‘I nearly forgot. Here’s the key for Jacob. He’s welcome to use it any time. And you must come to dinner again. Soon.’
Juliet took the key home and gave it to Jacob. All the way back she had been persuading herself that she was not going to ask what it was for.
‘Thank you, sweetie,’ he said and kissed the tip of her cold nose. ‘Tea and cake? I found some madeleines in that little French bakery.’
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