King Solomon's Carpet

by Barbara Vine

  She managed to say, ‘Let's go to your room.’

  Afterwards she thought it was like one of those fairy stories or myths in which the cantrip is upset by the wrong word or prohibited act. Psyche looks at the sleeping Eros and spills on him the hot oil from her lamp. The new young princess dares ask her husband where he goes when he leaves her by night. But it is enough, it destroys the moment, the spell is broken.

  She had spilt no oil, broken no prohibition, done no more than speak and at first it seemed a wise thing, a necessary thing. It had been impossible for her not to say it. He lifted his head, remaining for a moment perfectly still. Then he drew her clothes together across her bare breasts. He caught her for a moment in an embrace of held shoulders and cheek against cheek. The casualness of that, the economy, should have told her. But she was carried away, transported on desirous wings, unable to think, unable even to breathe deeply. She leaned on him as he led her to the door. His arm was round her shoulder, holding her against him, but at the door he took it away. He laid a finger on his lips, opened the door.

  It was still dark up there. The children had gone. The house was silent and might, for all Alice cared, have been empty. Opposite them was the door to Five, his other room. He took her hand in both his. She was aware, incredulously, that he was shaking his head, smiling at her and shaking his head. He rubbed her hand, like someone comforting a child.

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘We can't here. Not with your Tom downstairs.’

  Alice could only look at him.

  ‘Think. Be reasonable. It wouldn't do, not in this house.’ He was whispering. ‘You'll understand that if you think about it.’

  She found a voice, a shaky one. ‘How can I think?’

  ‘Not with your Tom ill downstairs.’ He gave the hand he held a little shake and gently let it fall. Now they were not touching, had stepped apart, or he had stepped away from her. ‘Things become – sordid. They become sordid very easily and I should dislike that. We'll find a way.’

  ‘How will we?’ she whispered.

  He said, as if he spoke about some noble cause, looking beyond her, ‘We shall overcome.’

  He left her standing there. She could not have believed he would go like that, would leave her, but he did. He moved across the passage to the door of Five, put his hand to the handle, turned it, so that for a tiny instant of time she thought he had relented, that his arm would come out, his hand grasp her, draw her in. He stepped inside without looking back and closed the door. The ghost of a smile on his face she must have imagined.

  She wanted to hammer on it and scream. Instead she went downstairs and, knowing she must go to Tom, must go to him within minutes, delay no more than half an hour, but not yet, not yet, let herself into the Headmaster's Study and fell on to the bed.

  17

  One of the ghost stations – Marlborough Road, or perhaps Lords – was the point at which the northbound Metropolitan train came to a stop. Nothing remained but the platform itself and the wall behind it which, shorn of its coloured posters and notices, maps and advertisements, hardly looked as if it had ever been a station. The halfhearted light of a January afternoon seeped on to the track here, bleaching sections of the dirty concrete to a paler shade of grey.

  Lying on top of the third car from the head of the train, spreadeagled, by this time expert at holding on, Jasper reflected on Axel Jonas, who had asked him about these stations and if the trains ever stopped at them. He had said no. This was the first time it had happened in his experience. But he had no intention of telling Axel or even of speaking to him. That the man was living at the School he now knew and by this time was fairly sure he had not come there after him.

  Since that first encounter on the top floor, while he and Bienvida had been considering the future course of the bellrope, Jasper had seen Axel three times: on the stairs, in the back garden where the black-bearded man was contemplating the screeching hawk in its cage and out in the street, returning to the house from the Finchley Road direction. On none of these occasions had Axel taken the least notice of him. Not only did he appear not to recognize him, but not even to see that he was there. Jasper, who one way and another had come across some very peculiar people in his chequered existence with Tina, had decided Axel was mad and to give him a wide berth.

  The train gave a lurch and started to move. Jasper's anticipated thrill of riding at breakneck speed non-stop to Finchley Road had been rather spoiled by the stop. He had grown sophisticated, he could even think about other things while sledging. Inside the car below him were Damon, Kevin and Chris. Dean Miller had not been seen since the Epping trip. One or more of them intended to sledge on the southbound train going back. Jasper, climbing down and jumping for the platform without going back inside the car, encountered them all at the chocolate machine.

  He was half-inclined to leave it and go home, take the short-cut by that footpath running parallel to the British Rail track from Frognal to West End Lane. His grandmother had told him not to walk along that path alone, it was a notorious danger spot, and never after dark. It was not yet dark, though it soon would be, but Jasper paid very little attention to his grandmother's advice in matters of this kind. He thought he had a good chance of finding himself alone in the house apart from Bienvida, who did not count, and that this would be an opportunity to make some progress with the bell.

  Not exactly an argument but a discussion was in progress as to which of them should travel back to Baker Street on the train roof. Chris pointed out that Damon, though willing enough to accompany the others and watch them do it, had never actually sledged himself.

  ‘I'm not scared,’ Damon said. ‘It's just that I don't want to.’

  ‘Everyone wants to,’ said Kevin.

  ‘I don't.’

  ‘What do you come for then if you don't want to?’

  Damon said nothing and Jasper said he was going home. He had done what he set out to do, he had ridden the car roof on the long fast stretch and that was it, he might not sledge any more. All good things come to an end, as Brian had once said to him and Bienvida after a Saturday visit to the cinema when they had watched Dirty Harry round twice.

  ‘What are you going to do then?’ said Chris as if there were no other options on earth, as if the only possible hobby or interest or sport or leisure activity open to them was tube-train sledging. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Toll a bell every morning at eight o'clock, Jasper might have said, make it my bell, the famous Jasper Elphick bell that rings across Hampstead day in day out without fail. Of course he did not say that. He did not say anything. He was at an age when it is not required to announce plans to friends and invent excuses and explain things before taking a formal farewell, it is not necessary to arrange a next meeting, bid them take care of themselves, send love to their nearest and dearest, shake hands or kiss, look back and wave when departing. It is not even obligatory to say, ‘I'm off then,’ but only to walk away.

  Jasper had actually begun to walk away and to think about how he was to get through the barrier without a ticket – they were very vigilant at Finchley Road – when a voice came over the public address system. It was an Indian speaking with a strong sing-song accent and the vagaries of the system made it sound as if the speaker had his mouth full of stodgy carbohydrate, but the gist of the message could be made out. There had been an ‘incident’ on the line between here and Wembley Park. Considerable delays could be expected and passengers going south were advised to take the Jubilee Line.

  Every year about two hundred people try to kill themselves in the London Underground. Half this number is successful.

  Even those who cannot dive, who would not dream of diving into water, dive, not jump, in front of the oncoming train.

  A London hospital is investigating the possibilities of training London Transport staff to spot potential suicides on the platforms. They would be taught to observe unusual behaviour, a lingering on platforms when train after train has passed through, a pre
occupation with the lines, a final positioning at the tunnel portal.

  If they were going back on the Jubilee Line Jasper thought he might as well go with them. That train would stop at Swiss Cottage, where it might be rather easier to escape without a ticket and which was not much farther from home. And perhaps Damon, who lived somewhere in the Belsize Lane area, Jasper thought it was, would get off with him.

  The taunting of Damon was still going on and Jasper did not much like it. Of course he was used to it, heard it or something like it every day and all day, it was what life was about in his sub-adolescent world, someone finding your weakness, whether it was that you were too short or too tall, fat or had freckles, spotty or had red hair, black or Indian or had an accent or a funny mother or strange father or were too poor or too rich. But this was different, this seemed to get to the inside of Damon and to attack an essential part of him that was unseen and deeply buried. And whereas all those other things, like fatness or red hair, their possessor could not help, Damon you might say was responsible for his own lack of courage and it was a lack of something else that made him unable to be brave.

  Jasper did not think of these things in these terms. He was only just ten years old. But he felt them. He did not like the look on Damon's face, which was a cornered, puzzled, childish look, as if Damon were much younger than he really was and as if he might be about to do the unthinkable and cry. The skin of his face had become pink and puffy.

  In spite of the delayed trains on the other line there were not many passengers transferring to the southbound Jubilee. They found themselves in a car with only two other people, a man and a woman, both elderly. Jasper had noticed before that people tended not to get into the cars where the four of them were if it could be avoided. This he found gratifying. He had three cigarettes in a packet and he lit one, holding it up between the doors as they closed.

  Kevin, who had been quiet for a while, said to Damon, ‘You're wet. The seat of your jeans is all wet.’

  ‘It is not,’ Damon said, but he looked just the same, not at first understanding the implication. Then he did and he went red.

  Chris gave a crow of laughter. ‘You ought to have Pampers on’

  These, Jasper thought, were a kind of disposable napkin for babies. He had seen the TV commercial. He took a draw on his cigarette and said, ‘Leave him alone. Why don't you piss off?’

  The train still hadn't moved.

  ‘He's a baby,’ said Kevin. ‘He's chicken and he's a baby. A baby chick. Cheep cheep, baby chick.’

  Chris said, ‘Cheep, cheep,’ too and, standing up and hopping about, began making little flapping movements with his hands. They both cheeped and flapped and hopped. The train doors opened abruptly and Jasper's cigarette fell out on to the track.

  Jasper swore. He reserved his worst language for moments of extreme stress. ‘Fuck off, the pair of you,’ he shouted at them. ‘Fuck you, fuck off!’

  This roused the elderly man to action. He came lumbering menacingly down the car, got hold of Kevin with one hand and Chris with the other, started bellowing threats into Jasper's face. The doors closed, the train started and stopped again. No one noticed Damon go swiftly to the end door, open it and go outside.

  The event which caused the delay on the Metropolitan Line – a man had died when he threw himself in front of the southbound train leaving Preston Road – held Tom up when he returned from his grandmother's, but did not affect his outward bound journey. From the station at Rickmansworth he had to take a taxi, there was no other way. It did not trouble him overmuch.

  Lately, Alice had been buying all their food. She had a standing order on her new bank account to pay Jarvis's rent for both of them. If they went out to eat she paid and he had noticed that recently she had paid without complaining. Obscurely, he felt that Alice should pay. She had taken this job against his wishes, kept it although she knew he disliked it and nagged him about doing things he did not want to do. She must pay the price of that. What money he earned was his to do as he liked with and if the taxi cost him £5 it would be worth it.

  By chance, or perhaps because it was the only way to get there, the taxi went along the very lane where his grandmother's neighbour had taken the corner too wide, crashed into the oncoming car and been killed, where Tom himself had been hurled off the pillion and struck his head on a tree. The tree was still there. Its smooth, silky greyish trunk was not even scarred. Seeing it all again started one of Tom's headaches, or a headache started. Whether there was any connection he could not tell.

  He began thinking about how different things might have been if instead of accepting Andy's offer he had let his grandmother drive him to the station. Andy would no doubt still have been killed, his wife a widow, his three small children fatherless – or had he taken that curve so wide only because of the additional weight on the back? It was useless to speculate about that, perhaps useless to speculate at all. He, Tom, would have taken his degree, perhaps been auditioned and accepted by a celebrated orchestra. And he would never have met Alice.

  Or would he have, because that was meant, his fate? Other contingencies would have rearranged themselves to make that meeting happen, not in a tube concourse, but in some musical situation, perhaps at Snape or on the concert platform. Meeting Alice had saved his life, he had no doubt about that, no hesitation. Yet he knew that if he did not have money he would lose her. She had not said so but he reasoned that this was what it was about. As soon as she gave up that job she would look to him for money. Success and money, he had to have those things. Fame would come, or start to come, with the appearance in print of the article the journalist who had come that morning was writing about him.

  The journalist, a woman, an old acquaintance of a friend of Jay's, had turned up at ten with a photographer. Tom had wanted Alice to take the day off work so that she too could be in the picture, playing her violin, but Alice had refused.

  ‘I wouldn't want people to see me like that,’ she had said.

  He grew angry at once, in the way he did. ‘What does “like that” mean? Why wouldn't you? Who are these people who mustn't see you playing in what's going to be the great street orchestra of the nineties?’

  ‘My parents, for a start,’ she said. ‘Mike, if you must know. My employers. I'm a serious musician. I think I've done enough damage to my musicianship already. How can I get to study in Brussels if I've had my photograph in the papers playing with people like Peter and that Jay?’

  ‘Jay is a very good musician.’

  ‘OK, you tell that to your journalist but count me out.’

  The journalist asked about Tom's education and he told her about the accident, making quite a lot of the brain damage he now really believed he had sustained. He said it had diverted his talents along new paths and made him see that classical music should not necessarily be confined to that played by the Royal Philharmonic or listened to on compact discs. The people got rock and jazz live but were starved of real music. He had a dream of cities where an orchestra played in every square and a trio on the steps of every public building.

  Tom did not know if this was really his dream, he had thought of it on the spur of the moment. The journalist wrote it all down and recorded it on tape as well. He told her about busking in the Underground and when she asked him if he knew this was against the law, said, ‘What law? Some London Transport bye-law?’ and laughed derisively.

  She quoted, she had it all off pat: ‘“No person while upon the railway shall, to the annoyance of any other person, sing, perform on any musical or other instrument, or use any gramophone, record player, tape recorder or portable wireless apparatus.”’

  ‘Well, that's the clincher, isn't it?’ he said triumphantly. ‘“To the annoyance of any other person”? People aren't annoyed by what we do. They love it.’

  He told her about his ideas for amplifying, about wireless systems and ‘hard-wired’ sound, true diversity receivers and the elimination of ‘drop-outs’. She said, surely that was only for
rock and he said, why so? Imagine Beethoven coming through a really up-to-date VHF wireless system. She asked him if he had any hobbies, other interests, and he told her about the violin-making. He exaggerated a bit and made it sound as if he had already mastered the craft.

  Photographs were taken of the three of them with their instruments and others of Tom alone. The journalist said, ‘You're very good-looking, aren't you? I hope you don't mind my saying that.’

  Peter, who had developed a strange black humour lately, suggested that the best way to take his photograph was in a white cloak and carrying a scythe. The journalist gave a nervous laugh and seemed not to know what to say, for Peter did resemble a walking skeleton these days.

  Tom's grandmother looked younger than when he had last seen her. That was two years before. He had phoned her to tell her he was coming but she was not warm towards him, she was not welcoming. Her kiss was a brushing of her dry, powdery, sagging cheek against his own.

  She asked him if he wanted lunch, not to expect too much, she hadn't gone to any trouble, he would have to have what she usually had. Tom did not believe this, he thought it just the kind of thing people of her generation said, and he was rather taken aback when only cheese and crispbread appeared on the kitchen table, a couple of bananas to follow, and the kettle put on for instant coffee.

  His headache was the kind that is not a constant pain, or rather, that is a constant pain but with sharp running shafts of intenser pain as well. These, though not visible, though not of the migraine type, nevertheless felt like lightning flashes leaping down his temples or jumping across the crown of his head. He asked his grandmother for an aspirin and she gave him two dissolved in water.

  Their conversation for the first half-hour had been about her, her house, her garden, her occupations and her friends. Tom had asked the questions and she had answered. Halfway through lunch she had had enough of this and asked him abruptly if he had gone back to college.