An Irresponsible Age

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  ‘Would you like some wine?’

  ‘I used to sing.’

  ‘Red or white?’

  ‘White, please. Oh dear …’

  Alexander laid his hand on hers. ‘I was going to ask you to tell me about yourself.’

  Carlo considered the body in front of him. The man had been an alcoholic who bled to death when one of the enlarged veins in his oesophagus haemorrhaged. His yellow skin and distended gut told Carlo that the liver would be shrunken and knobbly, and his spleen the size of three fists instead of one. His body had kept a record of sorts – an appendectomy scar and another on his arm which looked to have been caused by glass or a knife, stained index and second fingers on his right hand, a nose in bloom, a pierced ear, although the hole had grown over, and an oriental tattoo hiding someone’s name.

  It seemed to Carlo that this man had long ago decided that his body did not matter – these sooty lungs, this angry liver, the clogged heart and guts. In a way he was right but he was dead now, and dying was something only the body decided.

  One morning Clara arrived at her studio to find a letter waiting. Dearest Friend, I am watching a pair of cardinals dance in the snow. He is absurd, of course, all chatter and fancy moves, and his red – more than fire-red, sun-red, copper-red or blood-red, it is red-red, without depth or variation, unbroken tone. The red doesn’t seem to belong to him, but to her – she is powerful and concentrated enough to dignify it. As if he had felt the cold and made a fuss, so she slipped off her coat and lent it. Such plumage. He does not deserve it.

  How are you, friend? Ready to bring your red to New York? The city will chatter and make its moves and plead with you to let them, us, try on your colours. What you said about my essay. So sharp and true. I was talking to you. I talk to you. Friend, my eye is on the eastern horizon watching for the snowbird, the firebird. Come burn us down. À bientôt, xJ.

  A letter from Jacob; a hand reaching down and lifting her into the rare air above, where she could be her higher self. She could allow herself this much if she did not write back.

  TWENTY

  Clara phoned Juliet and insisted that an invitation to the exhibition had been sent to her weeks earlier.

  ‘Did anything arrive from Clara? About her show?’ Juliet asked Jacob.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He did not look up from his book.

  ‘But if you’d opened it, you’d remember.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Surely you’d … Was it addressed to me?’

  ‘I don’t open your letters.’

  ‘Could you try to remember? Or have a look for it?’

  ‘Why? You know about the show, when and where it is.’

  ‘Yes, but she sent me an invitation and I didn’t receive it.’

  Jacob continued to read and Juliet sat beside him feeling troubled and ashamed. She did not think he was telling the truth and knew that the next day she would look, as sparingly as possible, through his papers. She found it – an envelope addressed to ‘Juliet Clough and Jacob Dart’. He had not opened it.

  The snow disappeared and the town of Littlefield enjoyed a brief, bare spring before the trees closed in once more.

  Jacob proposed a trip to Boston. ‘We could visit my old friend Patrick Hyde.’

  ‘The architect?’ Juliet was impressed.

  ‘At last, someone you’ve heard of!’

  ‘Isn’t he based in London?’

  ‘Yes, but he lectures at Harvard part-time.’

  It was the week before Clara’s show opened in New York and so Juliet suggested that they combine both in one trip.

  ‘I’m not coming to New York,’ Jacob said. ‘You go, do, but I’ll stay on in Boston or come back here.’

  ‘Why not come with me?’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he said, so openly and lightly that Juliet could not think what might be wrong with that.

  ‘Patrick Hyde is a old lech,’ said Terence when he managed to persuade Juliet to come out to the sports bar.

  ‘He’s Jacob’s friend.’

  ‘Then I’m glad I’m not.’

  ‘He does like you, you know.’

  ‘Then why does he become utterly silent when I enter a room?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I’m sorry.’

  Patrick Hyde had a warehouse apartment overlooking the Charles River. The world inside his building was hushed, subtly lit, and full of pleasing shades and textures. Juliet admired the sisal flooring, the brushed chrome light switches, the banisters wound with strips of leather, the smoky doors.

  This apartment made her long to live in a place that had not been home to anyone already. It took advantage of the plain lines and large dimensions of its space and every startling object in it looked made for its context. The overall effect was one of such balance that Juliet felt rambling and haphazard, like the kind of home she came from.

  Jacob wandered comfortably off while Patrick guided her towards a corner where two low sofas were arranged under a vast arched window.

  ‘What a fabulous window!’

  ‘Bettina Urlicht, Juliet Clough,’ said Patrick.

  She had not seen the woman because she was sitting on the floor.

  ‘And you’re fabulous too!’ Juliet improvised.

  The woman rose and unfolded. Her features were so brilliant and enlarged that if she smiled, as she did now, she seemed to zoom towards you. Unusually for someone of twenty-four, Bettina had admitted her power and taken charge of it, softening her voice and drooping shyly so that all who met her thought how beautiful but also how unaffected she was. Juliet was pleased to think that she might like Bettina, especially when she pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and loudly blew her nose.

  Jacob and Bettina greeted each other warmly, and the two women settled down to chat while Jacob wandered off again. Eventually, Patrick called them through to the dining room. He placed Bettina beside himself and Juliet opposite, next to Jacob, at one end of a table that could have seated sixteen. Juliet looked down into its surface, a welling green that swirled beneath the flicker of twelve tiny candles set in an iron spine. As her eyes adjusted, she realised that the walls were not black but a dry dark green that also shifted.

  Patrick brought in bottles of icy white wine, a heap of bread, a bowl of salad, and on a wooden board, a whole baked cheese. ‘The cheese is from Bettina’s family farm in Bavaria.’

  ‘You’re from a farm?’ asked Juliet, with no idea of how it sounded.

  ‘I am from Hamburg,’ Bettina explained. ‘It is my grandparents’ farm.’ Patrick smiled and ran his hand down her back in one thorough and familiar stroke.

  They ate and talked and laughed, and Juliet tried to stop herself wondering. Patrick was not handsome but he was attractive. He was at least twenty years older than Bettina and he wore a wedding ring.

  ‘My brother was going to be an architect,’ said Juliet, hating herself for being so eager to find a place in the conversation. ‘He got to his sixth year.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Bettina asked.

  ‘He gave up.’ Juliet couldn’t tell them; suddenly she didn’t want to. She could sense Jacob beside her, alert and detached.

  ‘Just like that?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Yes, just like that,’ said Juliet and waited for Patrick to pursue the matter but he turned his chair towards Bettina, who was whispering in his ear. Juliet found it hard not to watch them, especially Bettina, who was scooping up runny cheese with her fingers. When Juliet reached forward to pass Patrick a bottle of wine, Bettina let her hand fall to his thigh and stay there. In this small light, Patrick’s glutted smile gave him the appearance of a well-fed pet. Bettina continued to stroke him as she swivelled round to address Jacob.

  ‘We could go to The Lily after dinner,’ she said.

  ‘Bettina’s a member,’ Patrick said. ‘She knows the owner whereas I have only ever aspired to knowing someone who knows the owner!’

  Bettina gazed into his eyes, and th
en pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose. Patrick blessed her and patted her back.

  Bettina enthused about the clubs of Boston while Juliet tried to look impressed. When she could think of nothing to say, she decided to be encouraging: ‘It’s good to be reminded of what it’s like to discover the nightlife of a city.’

  ‘I’ve been here four years,’ said Bettina, stretching her smile. ‘I’m not talking about the obvious places. These clubs, places like The Lily, are more private, more … authentic.’

  Juliet liked Bettina for being so obviously young and had to stop herself saying that when she had been ‘your age’, she had sought out those places too: the clubs that were staged in a different venue each week – a warehouse, a ticket office, a lock-keeper’s cottage, a lying-in hospital, a gambling den.

  ‘So you don’t go out any more?’ asked Bettina. She had a way of ironing out her English so that it was impossible to know whether or not she was being mischievous.

  ‘I’m past it,’ said Juliet. ‘Thirty in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were older!’

  Patrick raised an eyebrow but Juliet just smiled. ‘So did I.’

  Bettina switched tracks. ‘So what’s your subject – cities? Bridges?’

  ‘Neither, at least not directly. I’m interested in frames, how we read their contents after the subject has, um, moved on.’

  ‘Frames …?’

  ‘How we define them and what we bring to them, or take from one to the other so in that sense …’

  ‘That could mean almost anything,’ said Bettina, looking so innocently bemused that Juliet could not feel cross.

  Patrick fetched a tray of grappa and coffee. He asked Juliet about Littlefield and she told him about the trees, but did so badly because she didn’t want to share what she really thought with these people. Bettina sniffed and yawned until Patrick went back to the kitchen and returned with a bowl, which he set down in front of her. It was warm milk, and she wound one long arm round his shoulders and stroked his cheek to thank him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said turning to face her, his mouth almost touching hers. ‘I forgot the honey.’ Bettina shook her head, brushing her nose against his.

  Jacob and Juliet watched as Patrick spooned honey into the hot milk and stirred. Juliet expected him to raise the spoon to Bettina’s mouth, but he didn’t. The girl wriggled and sneezed and one sleeve slipped down her arm revealing a nursery-pink satin strap on a broad brown shoulder. She lifted the bowl and with every sip she took, Patrick sank a little further towards her, as if slipping down into a warm milk bath.

  On the walk back to their hotel, Juliet was speechless. She did not dare say a word and Jacob said nothing either until they were lying in bed, when he observed that Patrick was ‘a bit of an arsehole, really’, and she exclaimed over the bowl of milk and he remembered the nightclub talk and they giggled about one thing and another, and then made love like good friends.

  Juliet fell into sleep and then woke an hour later feeling anxious.

  ‘Jacob … Jacob?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’ He could sound affectionate and attentive with the barest effort.

  ‘Did you think Bettina was beautiful?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You were looking at her.’

  ‘And at you and Patrick.’

  ‘You were sort of licking your lips.’

  ‘I was eating. What is this about?’

  ‘I just thought … you were so alert …’

  ‘Because I was with you. You’re being very boring. Go to sleep.’

  Boring. Juliet remembered how she had listened to his voice through the wall and thought that she had had a clearer idea of him back then when she couldn’t see him. Now, listening in the dark, she began to remember what she had known all along.

  Juliet caught a train to New York. After London, most cities seemed manageable, even provincial, but New York scared her. She liked to walk for the thrill of the light, which on a sharp March day was considerable. While her mind was on frames and clearings, loaded eyes and empty fields, she was being dazzled, captivated, overcome by the absoluteness of light sheared off by a grid of tall buildings and then hitting a plane. It was god and the city meeting one another conclusively, and it would only be like this for this hour on this afternoon.

  Juliet arrived at the gallery in a state of exalted certainty. She had envisaged a large white space but found a low-ceilinged factory floor with false walls creating a serpentine trail of tiny rooms. Juliet pushed her way through the crowd.

  In the third room, she saw two tall, colourful women. Clara was wearing an antique dress in a shade of pink which acted like a tuning fork so that her skin became warm cream, her hair cherry and apricot, and her eyes gooseberry jam. The dress was taut and smooth; she looked sumptuous. Beyond her, Barbara Dart wore her well-organised, innocent blues. She smiled with her eyes open wide.

  Not for the first time, Juliet felt as if there were some higher adult world to which she had not yet been admitted. She turned and set off into another room where Clara caught up with her.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re here!’ she said, giving Juliet a powerful hug.

  ‘Well at least now I know why Jacob wouldn’t come.’

  Clara looked at her carefully and Juliet explained: ‘Barbara. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have realised she’d be here.’

  ‘And Jacob’s not?’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Well that’s alright then!’ Clara bit her lip and twirled her sister round. ‘Nice dress, but it could do with a belt.’

  These days Juliet wore whatever Jacob approved of: over-sized untucked shirts, jerseys through at the elbow and nostalgic, wholesome dresses; clothes that reflected what he liked to call her – tomboy, crosspatch.

  Clara was studying her intensely. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘I’ve just walked the length of Manhattan and it’s bloody cold and I’ve come to see my sister and look who’s here: the former wife of my … my …’

  ‘Lover?’

  ‘We live together.’

  ‘Boyfriend then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are they divorced?’

  ‘Why is everyone so curious about the state of their marriage?’

  ‘She’s coming this way …’ Clara hustled Juliet through several rooms and stood her in front of a familiar sky. It was one of Clara’s early works – a study of the winter sun rising over the fields of Allnorthover. They were teenagers again, giggling and conspiring.

  ‘Maybe I should leave,’ offered Juliet.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘With a friend of Terence’s, quite a way out, so maybe I ought to go.’

  ‘I’m round the corner at the Lampen. You can stay with me.’

  Barbara arrived. ‘Clara,’ she commanded, ‘we must go to dinner.’

  Clara put her hand on Juliet’s shoulder. ‘I have my sister with me,’ she said.

  ‘How nice.’ She considered Juliet. ‘I’m afraid there’s simply no room …’

  Clara tightened her grip and Juliet wasn’t sure whether she was being brandished or protected. ‘In which case please give my apologies.’

  Barbara’s smile snapped shut and she turned so swiftly that she might not have heard Juliet murmur: ‘Mine, too.’

  The sisters cackled their way through the building and out onto the street.

  ‘I’m so glad you came,’ said Clara once more as she let them into her room.

  ‘Are you? I thought you weren’t even going to tell me about it.’

  ‘Oh that was just superstition, in case something went wrong.’

  ‘One minute you’re court painter and the next you’re turning down dinner. Isn’t that bad for your career?’

  Clara was pulling bottles out of the mini-bar, opening a room-service menu. ‘She’s not god, Juliet, she’s an arts
administrator.’

  ‘And Jacob’s wife.’ Juliet settled back against a heap of pillows and started to flick through television channels.

  Clara passed her a drink. ‘Then you should feel sorry for her. I do.’

  ‘So does Jacob, that’s why he sat for the portrait.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I think he couldn’t resist.’

  ‘Resist what?’

  ‘Himself.’

  This notion delighted Juliet.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Clara, ‘it turns out that Barbara can resist him after all. She resisted the portrait … rejected it, actually.’

  ‘But it was him! Entirely!’

  ‘Not according to her, or at least not the Jacob she wanted.’

  ‘But she can’t do that, can she? Commission you and then when it’s finished change her mind?’

  ‘She still paid me.’

  ‘But it’s so whimsical. I hate them all so much.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her and creepy Tania and that lecherous Patrick Hyde.’

  ‘You met Patrick Hyde?’

  ‘Patrick Hyde and his child bride …’

  ‘But he’s married to Valentina Zorb, the stylist. They’ve got about six kids.’

  And so Juliet described the dinner in Boston, Bettina and the bowl of warm milk, and the more Clara laughed, the more she span it out until they all, Patrick, Bettina, Jacob even, were nothing more than the cartoonish inflations of a vicious joke about a world that she wanted nothing to do with.

  Clara was worried that Juliet looked ill and Juliet was worried too – something had shaken Clara. As they fell asleep, she asked in the dark: ‘What’s wrong?’ but Clara turned her back and let out a monstrous snore.

  In the morning, Juliet came out of the bathroom to find Clara on the telephone.

  ‘Please,’ she was saying, ‘I know I’ve been … Perhaps I made you, you’re right, but don’t just … please … can’t we … I know it’s the middle of the night there but this is important … please … just … don’t go, say something, please …’