by Jane Gardam
She put a brown claw on his arm then. Still looking ahead of him, he switched the engine off again, ‘Let’s get out,’ she said.
They walked, a few feet apart, until they came to a long narrow dip in the heather, a swath of green turf scattered with dry black sheep droppings. When they lay down here the heather rose up around them, encircling them, so that they could not be seen by anything but a bird. They had melted into the moor. At the edge of this grass there were bilberries and the sharp arousing mineral smell of them mixed with the sweet smell of warmed grass. She undid each button of his shirt tidily and slowly, one by one. He pulled her sweater over her head and they held each other, she remembering every knob of his spine, he tracing the pattern of ears and jaw and neck, remembering how to undo the pile of black hair to let it fall round her shoulders like a shawl. He put both arms round her, his face in her neck, amazed that she could be so small. ‘I think you’ve shrunk,’ he said, and she said, ‘No. You have forgotten.’ They lay still, folded in to each other, heart upon heart, breath mixed with breath, until they grew warm in the October day, glowing, melded together. ‘Now or later?’ he said, but she did not answer.
Finding her mouth, he said, ‘Now or later?’ and she said, ‘Now.’
‘Right. Finish. Bell. You can all go, and good riddance. Philip Braithwaite, stay behind.’
Philip looked up in mild surprise. He had been drawing passionate lines against his ruler across a piece of graph paper. It was a French lesson. He ambled up in friendly fashion to the master’s desk as the others scattered for buses home.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Something up?’
‘Shut up and wait. Straighten yourself up. Stop being insolent.’
‘I only said . . . ’ Philip helplessly spread his hands. ‘I never said . . . ’
‘You’re to go to the Head.’
‘What, now? I can’t.’
‘You’re to see the Head now. He’s waiting for you.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s not possible. I have to meet my sister. I’m not exactly mad about going to the Head anyway.’
The French master closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw. ‘Philip, you haven’t a sister. Will you kindly, most graciously, most accommodatingly, get the hell out of this room and go to the Head.’
‘OK. Don’t hit the ceiling. I’ll go, but I’ve only a minute. They’re bringing my sister when they come to collect me. She’s only a baby. She can’t be kept hanging about.’
He went and burst into the headmaster’s office, forgetting to knock. The headmaster, who was standing looking out of the window, told him to go out again and come in properly.
‘Sorry, wasn’t thinking,’ said Philip and retired.
There was silence. The Head opened the door and saw Philip wandering off down the corridor and about to turn the corner. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, Braithwaite? Come back at once.’
Philip turned, smiled and gave a sketchy wave. ‘Oh lord—sorry. Wasn’t thinking.’
‘I should like to beat you,’ said the Head. ‘I should like to flay you. I should like to hang you from the light cord. I should like to fling you from this window on to the cement of the school yard and see you founder.’
Philip looked interested and then very sad. ‘I’m glad my stepfather can’t hear you . . . ’
‘Philip Braithwaite, I have asked you here in order to find out if something is wrong. Something more than ordinarily wrong. We know you have your troubles. We know you live in a lunatic asylum on the moors. We know you are but a simple child in an adult world. We know that your family is beset with God and that God hides His Face, probably exhausted by you all. But we also know that you are a very intelligent, perfectly sane boy with potential to do anything on this earth you set yourself to do. Why, then, will you tell me, do you refuse to attempt to do any work, freak out at every games period, get lost at dinner time and cause general havoc wherever you go? I know I’ve asked you all this before, several times a week, but today is the end of the road. The end of the road, boy.’
Philip looked innocently bewildered. ‘It’s been all right today. Quite a pleasant day,’ he said. ‘Sir,’ he added, as the Head’s face darkened. ‘I just had to go down into Whitby to buy a present for my sister.’
‘You know perfectly well you’re not any of you allowed into Whitby in school hours.’
‘There seemed no one to ask.’
‘But it is not allowed.’
Philip looked pained. ‘I told you. I had to get a present . . . ’
The Head sat down at the desk and pointed at a chair on the other side of it. Philip sat. The Head covered his eyes with his fingers and then uncovered them to grab Philip’s wrists as he stretched forward to pick up an ornament on the desk. ‘You bloody little twerp, put that down.’
‘It’s ormolu. Sir. Very nice. Lovely. We’ve got some Tibetans—’
‘Philip, I’ve had enough. The school has had enough. You lie like an Arab. Look, we’re going to have to expel you.’
Philip brightened.
‘I should be a happy man, a fulfilled man, if I could only expel you and see the back of you for the last time marching out of that door. Unfortunately, I can’t. I tried. I can’t.’
‘You mean when you got the assessors in? When you wanted me to go to the Dyslexic Centre?’
‘I do. And when you spelled “Here” H I Y, I thought we’d got rid of you. But you overdid it. Overacted. As you do.’
‘Well, I got interested in the Maths.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘And they made a mistake.’
‘So you told them.’
‘They did. I wasn’t exactly mad about telling them but—’
‘That will do, Philip. The point today is where has all the Art paper gone? That’s all I ask. You were working alone in the Art Room last week and all the paper is now missing. Four large rolls of it.’
‘Why should it have been me?’
‘Was it you?’
‘Well, yes. You see—’
‘Philip!’
‘I wanted it for the Tibetans’ mantras. We’d run out. Jocasta had something or other on her mind. I brought some back. I’ll replace it, honestly. My mother’s been awfully busy getting ready for the baby.’
‘Baby?’
‘My sister. She’s just been born.’
‘But I saw Jocasta last week . . . You mean there’s a baby?’
‘Just come. I’ll be seeing her for the first time this afternoon. They’re probably waiting outside for me now.’
The Head looked nervously over his shoulder out of the window and saw a Toyota he did not know approaching the school. Jocasta, light as a leaf, got out of it, her hair floating down her back.
‘I’m afraid I shall have to speak to Jocasta and your stepfather again,’ he said wearily. ‘Philip, Philip, what are we to do with you? Not today, though. I’ll make an appointment. Can you give me some satisfaction about the Art paper?’
‘Oh yes. I’ll get it back,’ he said as he stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added at the door, a smile of delirious enchantment breaking across his face. ‘I’d better go. You’ve been very understanding, sir. Actually, “lie like an Arab”—isn’t it a bit racist?’
The Head roared.
A moment later he watched the boy trot across the school yard towards the Toyota. Jocasta, on seeing her son, got back in her seat and sat looking at herself in a little glass and applying lipstick. A man not Philip’s stepfather was at the wheel and as far as the Head could see there was not a trace of a baby.
14
I believe that car was Andrew’s. It looked like Andrew’s. My son-in-law.’
The nice old Jaguar swooped down the high ridge road into a village with soft grass growing down its middle on either side of a stream. There were sheep wandering about and duc
ks sailing and waddling. A village shop.
‘Oh this is so charming,’ said Thomasina. ‘So lovely to be here after horrible Scotland.’
‘Horrible Egypt,’ said the general, who had been enjoying Scotland until yesterday and was bemused that Thomasina had elected to leave it. He had been bemused by many things about Thomasina, to whom he was not married but on behalf of whom he had been signing his name in hotel registers for severals weeks. The events of the recent past, the months since Holly Fox’s death, were proving startling to the general, whose life had gone steadily along since he left the army nearly twenty years before and even more steadily when two years ago he entered a calmly accepted widowhood in Berkshire, near his old garrison. He had been enormously enjoying his disciplined life and finding it very entertaining until his visit to Challoners Health Farm for his joints, and the first sight of Thomasina.
It was not at all that he had fallen for her lustfully, as old men so sadly do. The general’s love for Thomasina involved not a jot of desperation. It was seeing her there and recognising a dying breed, his breed, the breed of woman he had always been easy with, a woman untouched by the shabby, messy world that now surrounded him, belaboured him on the television, on public transport, from advertisement hoardings, even in the theatre, the world where everything hangs out. The last time he had been to the opera he had seen somebody in the audience in a vest.
Abroad was not so bad, or at least the abroad he had known so well. India was still recognisable, the beggars more prolific and even more demanding, but there were still hotels there where, on a good package, you could find people wearing the right clothes and speaking in the right voices. Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo was virtually gone—the Shepheard’s Hotel that had twisted his heartstrings once—but there were still gentle and spacious havens. There were still, for example, punkahs against the heat in Singapore, though nowadays the fans were worked by electricity and not the toe of a boy. You could still meet an old friend in the Cricket Club and the Straits Chinese were very efficient people. You had to respect them. They had the Club on a good financial footing.
But on the whole he stayed at home. He rarely looked at travel brochures now. The attempted afterglow of the empire there he found embarrassing, as he did the Royal Family, whom he had abhorred since they had gone public and made love in front of the camera. There were one or two of the Royal Family who were all right. The Queen, of course, and Princess Alexandra. About Princess Alexandra he even had very faint (and very secret) fantasies on the edge of sleep. He rode with her in Abyssinia and Tanganyika in the old days—narrow beautiful jodhpurs—or he fished with her in Scottish burns.
The first view of Thomasina across the salon at Challoners behind her silver teapot had given him an excited lurch, for she had Princess Alexandra’s legs and narrow skirt, and when she turned, as he called across to ask her if she were famous, Princess Alexandra’s crooked smile.
After Thomasina’s tragic departure he had worked vigorously to find her again. He had not been able to extract her address from the place but they had promised to forward a letter. There had been silence. He had at last discovered the reason through a mutual acquaintance run to earth at a party given by a Surrey GP. ‘Used to be married to old Herbert Fox. Quite something. Nice woman. Didn’t remarry. Very wrapped up in her daughter, who’s just died, I understand. Yes—only about a month ago.’
The general tracked down Thomasina and found not Princess Alexandra but the creature now anathema to all her friends. Thomasina encased in glass, untouchable. He also saw her bravery. He saw it in her clothes and careful make-up and flawless social manner, and he still felt, beneath it all, her charm. In the intensity of those first days it is just possible that the general caught a glimpse of Thomasina herself.
He felt a great warmth for her, a wish to be near her, to touch her elbow, enwrap her, take her to leisurely expensive places in his immaculate old car. He wanted to take her to meet the remnants of his own old background, where he knew she would appear deeply, effortlessly at home. She looked so unselfconsciously well-heeled, too. I could comfort her, he thought. If I were younger I’d say I was in love.
This thought gave him delicious amusement as he went swooping about in the Jaguar. Seventy-two, he thought with pride as, approaching Kensington High Street, he cut in on a little Renault driven by a man like Tony Blair and pressed the button that let down the Jaguar’s roof. He took to keeping the roof down in all weathers, to wearing a tweed cap. He began to notice girls’ legs in the autumn sunshine. He found in Hyde Park one day that he was thoroughly, positively happy.
Not that he’d ever been an unhappy man. Very lucky. Keeping going. Usually possible to find something pleasant to think about. Good health the secret. No bees in the bonnet. No love troubles.
Love troubles, he thought. Ridiculous. Couldn’t do it now.
He began, though—as he made his toast and porridge for breakfast in the shiny kitchen in his house on the edge of the garrison, calendar on the wall marked off with perhaps a dwindling number of things to look forward to, telephone these days ringing rather less frequently and the dear old dog dead—he began to remember love.
They were hazy creatures, like somebody else’s, girls from a pre-war book, girls whose names . . . There came a warm zephyr of a memory, something to do with Egypt, a weekend with a girl at Karnak in the Summer Palace during the war. He had been—what? Under thirty. He remembered a summer frock and a string of little pearls and sunset over the Valley of the Kings. Madeleine. She had been very shy. He’d met his wife Hilda soon afterwards at a noisy tennis party in Hong Kong and loved the way she smashed the ball about and looked so big and sensible and believed in the Empire. Madeleine, he thought. What became of her? And saw, amazingly, the line of her dress on the terrace of the Summer Palace half a century ago, her fingers tangling in the pearls. He saw that he had suppressed all this—good God, where was it all coming from? Blonde, blonde hair. He saw her longing eyes.
I missed something, he thought. Bloody fool.
Continuing the essential ritual of his day, after dinner on the kitchen work-top he poured himself a double Scotch and switched on the ten o’clock news. He switched off when it was over and found that he had not registered one word, but that the Egyptian sunset was still about. He picked up the telephone and fancied that Thomasina’s voice was as Madeleine’s would be now.
When he took Thomasina to dinner the next evening at his London club he cleared his throat, examined the moulding on the ceiling and suggested that what would do her good would be a package tour to Egypt. ‘For me, too,’ he said. ‘I should like to see Egypt again. Buck us both up. What do you say?’
But Egypt with Thomasina was not to be the gentle time with Madeleine. They began in Cairo with a non-luxury hotel. There had been no tour available so they had simply bought a couple of airline tickets and made reservations for themselves in something that sounded quiet and where there would be no Americans. The hotel had turned out to be far from the Nile, down a maze of dirty streets and looking over an empty sports stadium, and the general spent the first morning trying to change the reservations, with no success. They had a bad lunch in a restaurant smelling of hamburgers and then trailed about the Museum of Antiquities. Tutankhamun’s head was out on loan and round every grubby sarcophagus a dirty fellow with a beckoning finger tried to lure them off to see secret horrors in dark corners denied, they were assured, to the general public. ‘Dead babies covered with hair,’ one demon promised them.
The general led her away towards the Bazaar but something had happened to the sky. It had turned the colour of uncleaned copper and sand was uneasily snaking the streets. They took a reluctant taxi, in which the driver had been curled up on the floor, to visit friends of the general’s dead wife. Valerie had married romantically on leaving Cambridge an Egyptian economist. The apartment was in Stygian darkness owing to a power cut and the darkening sky. ‘But we alw
ays need the lights on in here, anyway,’ said Valerie. Dusty sand lay deep on shelves and tables, in folds of the curtains, along the top of the sunny but fading photograph of Girton girls in caps and gowns, in 1938. The husband sat slumped in a broken chair, his long yellow hands hanging towards the floor. There were little cakes that tasted of sand. The apartment was on a lower floor of an old six-storey block and at intervals loads of rubbish were chucked from above and fell past the window to land with a thud in the street below. The hostess moved with dazed dignity, carrying milk jugs, paper napkins. Sandwiches garnished with parsley the husband turned from with disgust. Suddenly he asked about this year’s Boat Race and they all tried to remember it. Valerie mentioned the general’s dead wife, Hilda, and then burst into tears.
That night the sandstorm closed the airport and for two days Thomasina and the general stayed in the hideous hotel watching the cars in the streets below being coated with sand as thick as a deep snowfall. The snow was solid and dark and did not melt. The city was silenced. Somehow they forced a cab to take them to the airport to see if they could get to Karnak on the second evening, and found themselves marooned there, alone except for a party of giant Texans in T-shirts, Stetsons and boots. No Egyptians were to be seen except for those bundles of rags blurred into mummified shapes all over the lounges, the duty-free, perhaps even the runways, sleeping till the sand had settled and drifted away, God knew when.
Utter silence covered Cairo. They joined up with the Texans, who were drinking Glenfiddich—which improved things no end—and at last accompanied them to their suite in the Mena House Hotel beside the Pyramid, a fee like the national lottery jackpot being demanded by and paid to a doleful cab driver who implied this would be his last drive on earth. In the Texans’ suite Thomasina and the general drank more whisky, ate smoked salmon, talked about racing, entered a violent argument about American politics, were found somehow a single room in the hotel, into which the two of them crammed, became lovers and awoke the next morning to a curiously muffled but sunshiny world.