by Sam Lock
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘Well, of course it is. It’s lovely to have someone who means something to you: something more than just sex and bed.’
‘Well, darling – you should know about things like that,’ I answered her teasingly, knowing she doesn’t quite like it if I begin to answer her back.
‘Should I?’ she said, a little curtly.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you should. And I mean it nicely, by the way,’ which made her smile.
And as we sat there having a gossip and talking abut the various things we had done that day, I saw how much I appreciated the genuine warmth of her concern. ‘Don’t tell Len, though,’ I said, as the subject again came around to Mark. ‘Please, Thelma – not yet.’
‘If that’s what you want, of course I won’t,’ she answered. ‘It’ll be just between the two of us.’
‘For the moment,’ I said, since, as yet, my feelings about Mark weren’t really definite; and because I wasn’t yet feeling at all confident as to what his were about me.
‘Well, whatever – it’s nice,’ said Thelma, bringing the subject to a close. ‘It’s good. Things are changing, Eddie – for the better. I can see. There’s colour in your cheeks for once – do you know that? … Lovely coffee,’ she said, as she sipped from her mug and then dunked a chocolate digestive into it. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Really lovely.’
‘I’m glad,’ I answered – as the question suddenly entered my head as to exactly why it might be that in the various notes she had enclosed with her Christmas cards over the years, Amy had not mentioned to me once that her eldest son had married.
That first night of my return is fixed permanently in my mind: the memory of it ineradicable. It had been arranged that Amy would help me to settle in and would cook me some supper; and that Tom would return later with my aunt, who would then stay to keep me company until the night nurse had arrived. Which meant that once Amy had gone off to busy herself in the kitchen, I was alone in the house – or I had the sense of being alone, since although I knew that my father was there as well, his illness confined him to his room and I knew that there was no danger of his appearing and confronting me.
It was a strange experience being able to move from room to room without my parents being around. I recall how I went upstairs to the sitting room and, on opening its door, found that it had hardly changed at all. The furniture appeared to be in exactly the same positions; and the big, glass-fronted cupboard, which more or less lined one of its walls, contained the same things – the same volumes of Dickens and Trollope that my mother used to read, the same sets of silver tea-services and their accompanying trays, the same set of dark green cabbage-leaf china, arranged in rows on the upper shelves. And it seemed to match in almost every detail the night-time image of the room that I had carried in my mind, and had kept and guarded and had returned to so very often.
Now it was late in the afternoon, not one o’clock in the morning; but with it being mid November it was already dark, and the square looked exactly as I remembered it from all those years ago, with the town hall clock still lit by a pale-green light. Only now there were people about and the shops were lit; as were the windows of the Castle Inn, where my father so often went for a drink – particularly on market days, when its bars were open all day.
‘Excuse me,’ I heard a voice say behind me, startling me.
I turned to see a neatly uniformed nurse who stood facing me in the doorway.
‘You must be Mr Carpenter’s son,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am,’ I replied, not having taken in the fact that my father was so gravely ill that a nurse was required throughout the day as well as the night; yet, had I but thought of it, he could hardly have been left alone when my aunt and uncle, and Amy too, had all been there at the station to meet me.
‘Your father’s asleep,’ the nurse said, ‘and I’m about to go … But if you would care to sit with him –’
‘Oh, well,’ I answered, ‘if he’s asleep …’
‘Yes, I understand,’ she said. ‘My name is Beth. Beth Williamson.’ She thrust out a hand towards me. ‘Nurse Williamson, if you like,’ she added with a smile.
‘Thank you, nurse,’ I said, feeling a need to be a little formal with her. ‘I shall be here for a few days. Perhaps a week. But you know that, I expect.’
‘Yes, I do. Your aunt told me … It will give her a rest. She’s been so good, you know – quite wonderful – what with your mother dying as well.’
‘I am sure,’ I answered, not wanting to be made to feel too guilty on account of my long absence from home. ‘She was always close to my mother.’
‘And to your father too, it seems,’ the nurse replied.
‘Well, yes,’ I said, thinking it wasn’t true: for how could I imagine her, or anyone, having a close relationship with my father? ‘My father as well,’ I said.
That was then, however, as I have said before, and now is now, with both my parents dead and buried; the house sold; the furniture disposed of, except for things that my aunt and uncle wanted, and a few small pieces that I now have with me here and one or two other things that are left in store. And that is all there is to remind me of my childhood days in the country. It had been a shock to me, having both my parents die as suddenly as they did, and neither of them of a great age. It seemed that my life was full of savage, sharp divisions, of untimely partings and farewells. I told my aunt that it would mean a lot to me if I could come down and visit her from time to time; and since she seemed more than pleased by this idea I am planning to go there next week. That will be in the heart of the countryside – not in the town – and I am looking forward to it. For when I was small – from the age of about ten, it must have been – I was allowed to visit her – and my uncle too, of course – on a Saturday, walking the two miles or so through the narrow country lanes to their farm, which lies on the east side of the moor. There, different memories will be awakened, for those Saturdays are almost the only times in my childhood when I felt free and really happy. It was a happiness I felt I had to conceal, however, out of a fear that I might be robbed of it; but I knew that once Saturday’s breakfast things had been cleared away, and after my mother had called me up to her room, in order to give me some message, perhaps, or some small present for my aunt, I would set off; even in winter, when there might be signs of heavy snow. It now seems strange to think that I should have been allowed that weekly excursion; but there – I was; and I recall that I was never afraid (not that one had much cause to be in those days) of being a young boy on my own. Most of the boys who went to my school felt a similar sense of confidence, and we all moved freely about the countryside. I might pass a farmer on the way – on his tractor, perhaps; or, just occasionally, tramps, or ‘travellers’, as they were sometimes called – odd-looking men who toured the area’s farms and villages looking for work, never staying anywhere long, and whose lives seemed to be ones of being forever on the move. But they were never rude or threatening. They might not say a cheerful ‘Good morning, young man’, as the farmers and their workers did, and would only look at me in order to weigh me up – perhaps to judge by my clothes whether I came from a decent family – but they never made me nervous. If anything, I felt more secure during those walks than I did at any other time in those days. I was alone. There were only the trees and fields and the animals keeping me company. And I knew them all: the black, furrowed earth in wintertime, and the dark holly trees in the hedgerows, alight with scarlet berries; the black crows, soaring on outstretched wings across the frosted moor; the warm brown thatch of the few small cottages I would pass; the barking of dogs, the clucking of hens. Then, when I finally arrived at the farm, the sudden excitement of it all: of the men at work – busy feeding the cattle with a root vegetable called mangel, perhaps; or with flatpole – a coarse cabbage that wasn’t thought quite fit for human consumption, yet would sometimes be boiled, then chopped and fried with potatoes to make a delicious bubble and squeak. Also, the bread being baked in a wall-oven
in the kitchen – and at Christmas-time, when my uncle and aunt would give a party (to which I was never invited, alas, because it was a party ‘only for grown-ups’), the rich, unforgettable experience of the huge, thatched barn, in which the cider-press was housed, being emptied out and cleaned; and its rough, clome walls being whitewashed – or distempered, as it was then called – before being covered with shiny, metallic netting known as chicken wire, through which enormous sprays of fir and shiny holly would be threaded, transforming the barn’s spacious interior into a mysterious temple of green.
There was no tinsel, as I recall; no paper decorations of any kind; not even a Christmas tree. Just metal hurricane lanterns that lit the space in a particularly magical way. And then there were the long trestle tables – set out against one of the dark green walls – covered with stiff, white damask cloths, upon which, eventually, when the evening came, great cuts of ham, tongue, pork – a rib or two of beef, perhaps – would be placed; and on which bowls of beetroot and pickled walnuts, and later of junket and sherry trifle, would all be arranged with care, and with a natural sense of the aesthetic.
I so often wished that I could have stayed for one of those parties. But it was not to be. My uncle, who was particularly kind to me, and who was very sensitive about such things, would often say to me, as he was driving me home, ‘Pity you can’t stay, Eddie; but you’ll be allowed to when you’re older, you know.’
Now, alas, it is too late. Those days of such country richnesses seem to be over. My uncle and aunt are now too old for it, and are past such things in any case; and I doubt very much that the farmers of that area give quite that kind of party any longer – when, according to Amy (who was always employed to help for the evening in the kitchens), drinking and dancing went on into the early hours; and when the bedrooms would be full of card players sitting at small, baize-topped tables that had been set out around the beds. And often for quite serious sums of money, of which I knew that my mother disapproved – since she always told people the next day that she had chosen to ‘sit out’.
So – even though there will be none of all this to enjoy, I am looking forward to going there, and to be making a return to somewhere – the only place in my childhood – of which my memories are deeply pleasurable.
I seldom see Len alone. These days, it is almost always with Thelma, when I go to have lunch with them on a Sunday, perhaps; or occasionally to have supper. I stopped working for Len a long time ago, after I was offered a clerical job in an office by someone who ate regularly at his restaurant in Battersea. It’s the job I still have – and I took it because it gives me more reasonable hours: the evenings off, for instance, when I can go to the theatre or the cinema, both of which I enjoy. But I miss the talks that I used to have with Len at the restaurant, because he’s quite an intellectual and has lots of interesting ideas. He’s almost the opposite of Thelma, who is all instinct and feeling; which is why they make such a good couple, I suppose. He does come here at times, but, unlike Thelma, never without having arranged to do so beforehand. I like him so much, and often think to myself how lucky I am to have such a friend. I’ve learned so many things from him. He’s helped me to look at paintings and to think and to read books; although, to show how different we are in our tastes, he can’t understand at all what I see in the work of Ivy Compton-Burnett. ‘Can’t be bothered with it’, is the way he passes it off. And Hitchcock too – the film director – he can’t understand why it is that I like him, or why I like his films, rather. ‘Just thrillers – murder pictures’, he says, and can’t see that they have a strange depth – and, as I see it, are the products of a very deep form of possession.
Perhaps it’s the darkness in me that allows me to appreciate them: the fact that I know only too well how very powerful any form of compulsion can be. How it forces one to project one’s feelings on to things that are outside of one’s self, and so robs one of one’s centre. However, there are many other areas of taste in which we agree – more than enough – so I can’t really think that those differences are ever likely to spoil things for us. The one whom I am more concerned about is Thelma; about how she would cope with my having a relationship – one that becomes a permanent one, I mean. It’s ungenerous of me to imagine it, I suppose, but I somehow think that although she’ll profess to being pleased, and will say that it is all she ever wished for, she won’t be so underneath; and in time might even become a source of trouble. As yet, though, she and Mark haven’t met. Len has met him – but only once, and just by chance; because Mark was about to go home from here one Sunday when Len arrived. But that went well. They talked, soon laughed, shared a few light jokes about me, and that was that. There were no hints of anything else – of any displeasure. Len never says, for instance, as Thelma will often say, ‘Oh, that Mark’; as if he was not to be taken seriously, and was someone soon to be got rid of. On the contrary, I saw in Len’s eyes – in his smile as Mark left – that he was truly pleased for me; and that he really did hope, as much as I have begun to hope myself, that Mark and I will continue with our relationship and that it might eventually become a stable one; and that, with time, we might become just as much of a couple as are Thelma and himself.
V
How beautiful chelsea is, or at least this part of it close to the river. On my way home each day I fall more and more in love with it as I leave the main shopping street and turn into one of its side streets, and as I see, perhaps, as I did yesterday, the early evening sunlight gilding the brick façades of its houses. How can it be, I ask, that I should find myself here in the heart of London, when I was born and grew up in the country? There are no fields, none of the open spaces of the moors. Everything is contained, confined, boxed in.
Quite close to me, just a short walk away, are the grounds of the Royal Hospital, where a breeze blows in from the Thames, and where, in early summer, the famous Flower Show is held; and it’s a pleasant place to go to – particularly on a Sunday, when the city is quiet, and when there are often children playing, accompanied by their parents or their nannies. It’s helped me to appreciate urban life; made me see the city as a garden that has to be cared for and looked after, as opposed to something wild. Heather, which is such a part of my childhood memories, would seem out of place here, in this environment. Flowers and plants seldom spill randomly, as do the wild ones of the countryside; they sit formally in boxes, or in beds in the parks and gardens. And in a way, I prefer this. Prefer it, because it reflects the way my life has gone; the way I have made my choice – my direction. For I have come to love the life of the city: the weekend rides on the buses, whizzing me to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, which I now visit quite often. For I have become fascinated with painters and their paintings, and often wish that I had been blessed with some kind of artistic talent myself. I even think at times that I should go to night classes, perhaps, and try my hand at it.
Mark paints. Not very well, I’m afraid, but he likes painting a lot; so there we have something in common. I’d been with him to the National Gallery the other day and I foolishly spoke about it to Thelma. ‘Oh, very artistic, are we?’ she had answered with a smirk, and really offended me, in the way that she so easily can. I don’t know why it is that she reacts to things in that way, unless it is out of fear; because, in this case, she has so little sense of visual things. Or it could be jealousy, I suppose. ‘He’s been to the National Gallery,’ she said to Len, when I went to have lunch with them last Sunday. ‘With his friend, Mark,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know he had leanings in that direction – did we?’ So I’ve said no more to her about it; particularly because Len didn’t speak up and support me, as he so often does. But that could be because he too isn’t interested much in things to do with the eye; books and words being his world. I did say to her – to Thelma – ‘I bet you’ve never heard of Piero della Francesca,’ trying to put as much bite into my expression as she puts at times into hers; but it didn’t work. ‘Is it likely?’ was all she threw back at me, a
s she disappeared into the kitchen.
No, I thought to myself, it isn’t. She’s so blind about so much, which makes it all the more difficult to introduce her to anything new. She’s so conservative, so very set in her ways.
However, the main thing is that Mark knows who Piero is all right. He’s one of his favourite painters, in fact, as he is mine. There’s a marvellous picture by Piero in the National of Jesus being baptised, with a near naked man at his left standing close to a winding stream; and he – the man – is wonderfully painted: as, for that matter, are the three angels standing at Christ’s right: three extraordinary columns of pleated drapery, and with such serene, impersonal expressions upon their pale, pink faces.
Then, in the middle of the picture, there is Christ himself, with St John standing close to him and about to perform the ceremony. It’s difficult to describe, but there is such a very pure, such a very refined, air about everything. It seems to me that it is quite unlike the work of any other artist of that time – or, indeed, of any time. Painters like that don’t appear very often it seems; don’t reach that point of clarity, of a wondrous kind of abstraction, and of achieving such a high form of spiritual order.
Another painter I like very much is Stubbs (which shows that my taste is rather classical, I suppose). There’s one of a lady in a carriage that is being drawn by two incredibly well-painted horses. Jet-black in colour, and so dreamlike, so poetic. I have found that if I study this picture for a while, it surrenders a strange, uncanny meaning: a sense of timelessness; of it being not about the things of this world at all, but about some other place and time that is both constant and eternal, and that exists beyond the world of the appearance that the conscious mind sees and knows.
It’s one of my favourite paintings. And Titian’s Portrait of a Lady is another. That is something quite different, in that, in a way, it is so incredibly present – there in the room, hung on the gallery wall. But it too achieves that sense of timelessness; the image being so brought down to essentials that it generates a power of its own; so that I find myself thinking about its literary subject matter hardly at all. I have no fantasies about the lady who, in her plum-coloured dress, stares so uncompromisingly out of the picture-frame. It simply doesn’t concern me who she might have been or what her station in life had been. Somehow, the structure of the image overcomes all that, and I find my eye wandering appreciatively and in admiration from one part of the picture to another; from the extraordinary sensitivity of the lips, to the fine gold chain around her neck, to the sudden, dramatic slash of white that is provided by the lining of her sleeve and that explodes out of the dark plums and greys of the painting’s overall colour. And all this has been part of my learning – of my growing up; and a result of the decision I took to leave home and to make a life for myself in London.