‘All the way to bloody Swaffham,’ sighed Michael, as Maisie pulled out on to the road again. They drove in silence then, except for the radio music, for several miles.
‘It’s a very wonderful thing,’ said the man at last, ‘to listen to such beautiful music along the road.’
Maisie glanced at Michael, and they smiled a bit at each other.
‘A privilege,’ added the man.
After a while, Michael said, ‘Stop when you can, Maisie – I’d like to drive for a bit.’
When they had changed over, Michael drove very fast to Swaffham, where they said goodbye to the man. They watched him as he went off, shouldering his placard as if it were a rifle. He didn’t look back, intent on something.
‘Let’s get some tea,’ said Maisie. But before they had tea she went into an ironmonger’s and bought a rucksack.
‘We’ll have to do the last couple of miles on foot,’ she said, ‘like the old pilgrims. There was a relic, you know – some of Mary’s breast milk – brought back by the crusaders, and even Henry VIII went barefoot, the last bit to Walsingham. So we must at least walk it.’
‘How did I come to be keeping company with a madwoman?’ But he tried the rucksack on, altering the straps and stowing the ikon inside it.
‘You look like something out of my Russian fairy-story book,’ she said.
‘It’s your fault,’ said Michael. ‘My appearance is a direct result of my knowing you. My Russian hat, my heavy rucksack with precious contents, my hangdog expression – all of it because of you. Because I love you.’
He stooped and kissed her. ‘I really love you, Maisie,’ he said. He put his arm round her. ‘Let’s go and have some tea.’
They sat for nearly an hour, drinking tea in front of a coal fire. It was a pleasant tea-shop, the table old and round, polished and rickety on the uneven floorboards. The waitress, old too, with thin, mousey hair and swollen ankles in their thick stockings, had a sharpish, direct way of talking, which left one refreshed and strangely soothed because of its lack of sweetness.
‘You’re not from round here,’ she said. ‘Neither am I.’
There seemed very little to eat in the place, though the huge pot of tea was fresh.
‘The buns are yesterday’s,’ said the woman, ‘and they’re better toasted. I’ll bring you some jam.’
So they lingered on, enjoying the emptiness of the place.
‘I’m not surprised no one comes here – there’s nothing to eat,’ said Michael.
‘Have some jam,’ said Maisie.
‘Are you happy?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very.’
‘Doesn’t take much to make you happy, does it?’
‘Well – it takes being with you.’
They left the waitress a huge tip and made their way back to the car. On the way they passed their hitch-hiker outside a chemist. He was holding up his notice which now said, ‘God is not mocked’.
‘I told you, he is an iconoclast,’ said Michael, ‘protesting against graven images and medieval goings-on. Which road do we take now?’
‘Take the Fakenham road.’
‘No more hitch-hikers.’
‘No more hitch-hikers.’
When they had passed Fakenham, Maisie asked Michael to look out for a good place to leave the car.
‘We must walk the rest of the way,’ she said.
‘It’s going to rain,’ said Michael. ‘Look at that dark cloud.’
‘You’re allowed to keep your shoes on, then.’
‘Thanks.’
He parked the car by a bridge and two or three cottages.
‘Now,’ said Maisie, ‘let’s get to Walsingham.’
They set off at a good pace, the rucksack with the ikon on Michael’s back. It was about four o’clock and the winter’s day was beginning to come to a close. As they made their way along the country road, a strange greenish light shone from behind a dark cloud. Before long there was a brief sharp hail-shower, like cold hard grain flung into their faces. Soon after, a rainbow hung in the sky, gradually becoming brighter and more intense. It stayed fitfully for most of their walk.
Birds hopped in the dry leaves that filled the ditches, a few hard catkins shivered in the hedge. Everything smelled cold and earthy.
They got to Walsingham just before dusk.
The first person they saw as they came to the market square was a hooded monk carrying a plastic carrier bag with ‘Jollife’s Emporium’ written on it in red letters. He was just standing there in the dwindling light.
‘I’ve got a feeling it’s all going to be like this,’ said Michael. ‘It’s addictive, one begins to want everyone to be odd, and the odder the better.’
And when they knocked at the Georgian house that was their destination and were greeted by a Russian who must have been nearly seven feet tall, and who embraced and kissed them both, it did seem as if it was all going to be like that.
Although he was dressed like an Englishman, it did nothing to disguise his foreignness. His long grey hair fell about a face that was hypnotically attractive, dark eyes that missed nothing, a large bony nose, cavernous cheekbones. Nevertheless, the room to which he led them was very English too, understated and comfortable. A bright log fire burned in the grate.
They were offered vodka or whisky, but did not accept. Michael began, at once, to unwrap the ikon. Carefully he folded the newspaper and the cloth and brushed aside the straw, to reveal the image. A piece of straw fell on to the immaculate carpet and Maisie picked it up.
They were all looking down now at the exposed ikon, still lying on its bed of straw. The Russian made no attempt to hide his tears.
‘If this were the only image in the world,’ he said, ‘we would need no other.’
Maisie found the complexion of her thoughts much changed by the meeting with the Russian, as they walked back to the car.
‘It would be easy to be drawn in,’ she said. ‘I find it difficult sometimes to distance myself – his emotions and beliefs are so compelling. They could be infectious.’
‘It’s a job you have done. And now it’s over,’ said Michael.
‘It is not really completed yet.’
‘Leave it,’ said Michael. ‘I wish you would just leave it now. How far is the car, would you say?’
‘A mile or so, not far.’
‘I hope to God it’s still there.’
‘Of course it will be. Don’t worry. Let’s enjoy the night.’
They walked on. Sometimes a car passed them, but no one else was walking out on that moonlit night, although it was nearly as light as day.
When they reached the car Michael said he would drive. Neither of them spoke much as he drove all the way to London, but the silence between them was like a conversation. And as the car sped south, the moon sped with it, lighting the clouds as it travelled.
5
‘WE can stay in bed, and just go out for food,’ said Michael the next morning.
He had flung back the duvet, so that he could see Maisie’s nakedness. He stroked her thigh, then kissed it. Maisie turned on to her stomach.
‘I have to go to an auction preview this morning,’ she said.
Michael groaned. ‘Where? Newcastle? Portsmouth?’
‘Knightsbridge. Will you come?’
‘Oh, just down the road, that makes a change. Yes, we’ll go together.’ He slapped her on the behind and then kissed her in the same place.
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ he said. ‘I want to eat you.’ He pretended to eat her, starting with her little finger. When it got a bit rough, Maisie pushed him away, laughing.
‘You know where all this will end,’ she said. ‘Get up.’
‘You’re always ordering me about,’ he said, but he got up, and they showered and breakfasted and got dressed between bouts of larking around. They were both happy.
When they emerged into Kensington, it was drizzling with rain and they got on a bus to Knightsbridge.
‘It won’t take long,’ said Maisie. ‘I’ve just got to look at something for a client.’
‘Another ikon?’
‘A reliquary,’ she said. ‘My client is very excited about it.’
And it did turn out to be a very beautiful and arresting piece of work. Made of plain and beaten gold, it was a round, flower-shaped casket about the size of a man’s head. In the catalogue it was described as a French double reliquary with an unusual locking system, decorated with angels with wings folded over their breasts.
Maisie showed Michael how the thing opened and where, once, it would have hidden relics. (According to Maisie’s research, these were a fragment of cloth from the swaddling clothes of the Christ-child and a thorn from the crown of thorns.)
‘The relics were probably stolen at some point,’ said Maisie. ‘It was the relics themselves, not the reliquary, that would have been prized.’
This reliquary did not look like a receptacle or container but more like a burnished flower: its beautiful fretted border was like the rays of the sun or the petals of a flower. A sunflower, perhaps.
Michael smiled at Maisie’s serious face. Everyone – there were quite a few people in the big echoing auction room – spoke in a low voice as if taking part in a conspiracy. Time ticked by slowly.
When they came out once more into the street it was like moving into a speeded-up film. Everyone was suddenly rushing about. Dark-coated men with long legs and large black umbrellas. Old women with lipsticked, wrinkled mouths and Harrods bags. Indian women floating along, their bright saris like wet tissue paper trailing along the pavement.
‘Home,’ said Michael.
‘Not yet,’ said Maisie. ‘I want you to amuse yourself in a pub or something. I have to see someone – one of Leo’s friends. I won’t be long,’ she added.
‘Don’t be long, then. I’m not safe left alone.’
‘Don’t be childish,’ said Maisie sharply. He was threatening to get drunk, she supposed, if left to his own devices for too long. Michael raised his eyebrows at her tone, and she apologised for it but seemed suddenly abstracted.
‘I’ll see you in about an hour in the pub on the corner,’ she said, and she walked briskly away, leaving him to wander off to the Golden Lion.
Maisie walked for ten minutes or so, arriving at a fine terraced house with railings and a bronze plaque. She rang the bell and picked a bay leaf from a neat potted tree by the door.
She waited for a few minutes in a room with bowls of dried roses and delphiniums, copies of yachting magazines and a single original Matthew Smith on the wall.
Quentin Freeman kissed her on the cheek. ‘Hallo, love,’ he said, ‘come in and sit down.’ He led her to an easy chair in his surgery.
‘Sitting comfortably?’ he asked.
‘Is it as bad as that?’
‘Depends,’ he said. ‘It’s a positive result, Maisie. You’re definitely enceinte.’
‘Oh, God. I can’t believe it,’ said Maisie.
‘You must have had a good idea that you were.’ Quentin Freeman looked at her curiously, kindly. ‘What does Leo think?’ he asked.
‘Leo? Look, Quentin, I don’t want Leo to know about this.’
‘All right.’
‘Promise?’
‘Of course, Maisie, you have my word. Is it a willed one, a wanted one? Do you want to keep it?’
‘No. No. I don’t know.’
‘It’s early days – but the sooner you make up your mind …’
‘Yes, I know. Of course.’ She began tearing the bay leaf into pieces. Quentin Freeman watched her quietly. At last she said, ‘Did you mind my coming to you?’
‘Good Lord, no.’
‘Well … Leo and, well … you know. But I thought you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Good Lord, no … what are friends for? How is Leo? I haven’t seen him since the summer.’
‘He’s … the same. Unchanged, really. You know Leo.’
‘What about you?’
‘Well, I’m having an unsuitable love affair.’
‘Why unsuitable?’
‘Well … too hectic.’
‘Sounds good. Better than being bored.’
‘Perhaps. I wasn’t bored, though.’
‘You probably were without knowing it.’
‘Jessy all right?’
‘Oh, yes, Jess is fine. Look here, Maisie, no need for us to lose touch. Why don’t you come round – if you can find time in the midst of your love life?’
‘Thanks. I might. I’d like to,’ said Maisie, but knew it was unlikely, anyway while she was with Michael. She wanted no one else; she wouldn’t care if the world emptied. Just her and Michael and the birds and the fish, the creatures which inhabited Adam and Eve’s world. No human babies to mess up Paradise.
‘Goodbye, Quentin,’ she said, ‘and thanks.’
‘Good luck, Maisie.’
Walking back down the street she had walked up only a short time ago, she carried a new knowledge with her. She was pregnant. The world had changed. It was now a different place. And she was different. Nature had her in its maw.
Soon a sort of panic would set in. She remembered.
By this time the winter afternoon had begun to thread its way through the streets of Knightsbridge, switching on the lights in windows.
Michael was drinking beer with a tot of whisky beside it. He stood up as she came in.
Without waiting to sit down, Maisie said, ‘Michael, I seem to be pregnant. What am I going to do?’
‘Is that what you’ve been to find out? Why didn’t you say? Why have you kept it to yourself? Sit down, for God’s sake.’
But Maisie wouldn’t sit. ‘Oh, what shall I do?’ she said, as if to herself.
‘Isn’t it we? What are we going to do?’
‘I think it’s me that’s pregnant,’ said Maisie. She looked at him. ‘It’s my life that’s falling in ruins about me.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Michael, finishing the whisky and leaving the beer.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t really know. Home, I suppose.’
A feeling of strangeness lay between them as they walked to the tube station.
I am lashed to nature, thought Maisie.
She has done this magic thing, thought Michael. How fearful a thing is a woman.
How dangerous his seed is, thought Maisie, as their train slid towards them out of the darkness. How does life come from that strange sap, that milky juice?
The train jolted away.
‘What are you thinking about, Maisie?’ he asked quietly, his face white in the eerie light of the underground.
‘Pomegranates,’ she said.
‘Why pomegranates?’
‘They are the most beautiful of all fruits. When you cut one in half, think what the seeds are like. Their shape and colour, and the way they are fitted together like a mosaic.’
He squeezed her hand and turned away, thinking he was near to tears. They changed trains like sleepwalkers.
‘Earls Court,’ he said, ‘we get off at the next stop.’
The next two days were spent for both of them in a state of unreality. Neither could absorb the fact of Maisie’s pregnancy. Neither knew what they felt or what to do, if anything, about it. There was also uneasiness about the question of Maisie’s age, which, for the first time, occupied their thoughts.
Their love-making was changed. Maisie hoped against hope that the physical traumas of sex might deter the foetus from settling down comfortably in her womb. She wanted their sex life to become more violent to this end. Michael, secretly and illogically, felt that his love-making would reinforce the fact of Maisie’s pregnancy.
And they were at odds with each other at some deep level that neither could define or express.
Often, though, they forgot the problem, and things were as they were. Until one of them remembered – usually Maisie.
Then one of Michael’s musician friends telephoned.
‘I’ll onl
y be gone for two days,’ said Michael. ‘I want to get this thing over, it’s been hanging about long enough. It’ll make some money and I need to.’
‘Must you stay overnight? It’s only a stone’s throw – Shepherd’s Bush,’ said Maisie.
‘I want to get it done in one go,’ said Michael.
He knew the timing was wrong. Just when Maisie had discovered her pregnancy, he was about to go off. But she was sensible, he thought, not the sort of woman to get into a state. Capable. Intelligent. That was what he liked about her, he thought, as he held her, kissed her, told her he would miss her and would be back soon.
It was a wrench to part with her. But once outside there was a kind of relief. Guilt is part of being a man, he thought.
As he jumped on to a bus which was slowly making its way up Kensington Church Street in the heavy traffic, Michael had the fleeting thought that it would be possible to disappear into London’s seething, changing life, and never see Maisie again. He was startled and sickened by this thought. His emotions ricocheted against each other as he sat there, looking out of the steamy window, seeing nothing. He felt relief at being anonymous, packed in a crowd, alone; himself for himself only. He felt guilt. He felt a tender love for Maisie. He felt fear. Fear of being pulled into the web of family again. It was as if all that was going to happen again: he saw his mother’s dark face as she sat in the corner in the best chair, the suffocating pull of home, its roots buried deep like black threads under the skin, in the flesh, around the heart.
But Maisie was different; she did not hold him, only touched him with a light touch that made him want her to stay for ever.
But a child – his and Maisie’s child – it was somehow an uneasy and impossible idea. In its impossibility, its uneasiness, it dissolved, like a mirage, in the reassuring familiar atmosphere of the recording studio. The boys were sitting around on pieces of recording equipment, smoking. Someone was playing a piece of Segovia on the guitar.
An older man with a crew-cut and an earring offered Michael a can of beer. ‘Hell’s job to get the boys together,’ he said. ‘How’s life, Mick? Kate?’
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