Pack of Cards

by Penelope Lively

  The crowd of young people was like a gently waving sea-anemone. Their hair lifted in the wind, their clothes made a kaleidoscopic pattern of colour so that the whole mass, shifting, rippling, ebbing and flowing at the edges, was like some primitive sea-creature and Miss Carlton, advancing, felt herself, like a shrimp, most pleasantly digested. She continued until at last she reached a point where the crowd was so closely packed that further advance would be anti-social. People were sitting and lying all around, except for isolated figures who stood swaying in a trance-like way. Miss Carlton took her small folding stool from her bag, sat on it, and looked around her with interest.

  The platform was some way away, but she could see it more clearly now, and from the considerable activity going on there guessed that the concert must be about to begin. Musical instruments were being assembled. She began to study her immediate neighbours. Next to her was a young man with the bearded, long and tragic face of a Renaissance Christ. Miss Carlton observed him, fascinated. He wore a flowered shirt, gaping open to the waist to reveal a thin, hairless chest. Below that were very tight trousers, faded in patches that had a curious symmetry, and bare feet. He looked every inch the religious ascetic. In front of Miss Carlton, and facing her, was a girl. Indeed, they were so close that Miss Carlton could feel the stuff of her dress shiver delicately under the girl's breath. She was very young, with a pale face and long thick wavy hair, hanging over either shoulder almost to her waist. She too had associations with some other age; she was, Miss Carlton thought, the very image of a Rossetti painting. Her clothes, too, suited the part – thin and floaty, in the muted colours of which Miss Carlton herself was fond; plum, russet and heavy greens. As Miss Carlton watched her she leaned forward suddenly and touched the ropes of beads around Miss Carlton's neck.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘that's nice.’

  Miss Carlton looked down. She was wearing her amber necklace, as she usually did, and her mother's pearls – the long rope that came nearly to her waist – and several strings of jet.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said the girl, in an appreciative tone. Miss Carlton realised that she, too, wore several strings of beads, and indeed, looking around, she saw that most of the girls and some of the men were decked out with necklaces much like her own. There was, she now saw, a conformity about their dress, and her own appearance matched it in many ways. The style, the colours, and the materials they favoured were much like the things she wore herself. Miss Carlton, who knew that she stood somewhat apart in taste from many of her own generation, felt for the first time in her life a member of a group. Only her age distinguished her from her companions.

  The girl had turned aside to talk to a friend, and Miss Carlton looked around her again. What she saw filled her more and more with a strange nostalgia. These people, she knew – had known for some time – were ghosts from her own past. They were the students she had watched go in and out of the art school her father would never allow her to attend; in their brave, flamboyant clothes, their huge-brimmed hats, their beards, they were the people of Trilby, of William Morris, of the Pre-Raphaelites, of all that culture she had secretly admired in her own youth. They were the bohemians against whom her father had railed – the disrupters of society, the profligates, the fiddling grasshoppers. How she had admired and envied them! Not that she had borne her father any ill will, but by the time he died she had been over forty – far too old to do any of those things for which she had yearned so deeply. She had always kept up her interest in art, of course, visiting the Summer Academy every year, and after her father's death she had allowed herself certain indulgences of dress and behaviour that would never have been permissible in his lifetime. What would he have thought of these young people? Miss Carlton gave a sudden little laugh.

  The girl who had admired her necklaces stared at Miss Carlton, a faint look of enquiry on her rather impassive face. She was a nice girl; Miss Carlton had seen that at once, before she spoke. She reminded her slightly of her great-niece in Dorset, though she was prettier.

  ‘I was thinking of my father,’ said Miss Carlton apologetically. ‘He so disliked what they called aesthetes in his day, you know. Very intolerant, I'm afraid. My brother too – he used to tell me how he and his friends would go round de-bagging them when he was up at Oxford. I must say I always found the story distasteful.’

  ‘What?’ said the girl.

  ‘Taking their trousers off,’ said Miss Carlton, ‘to indicate disapproval.’

  ‘I think that's disgusting,’ said the girl. ‘Hey, did you hear that?’ She leaned over and nudged the Christ-like young man, who shrugged.

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Miss Carlton with enthusiasm. ‘It was barbaric. Anti-aestheticism was something of a cult, of course. I always felt Patience was responsible for a lot of it.’ Seeing that the girl again looked bewildered, she added, ‘Gilbert and Sullivan, you know. There was that song – “A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, foot-in-the-grave young man”.’

  The man and the girl gazed at her and after a moment the girl said, ‘I never heard of that.’

  The conversation flagged and indeed it was becoming difficult to talk above the increasing noise from the platform. The loudspeaker crackled almost non-stop now; people, in their appearance much like the members of the crowd who stared up expectantly, scurried on and off with microphones and coils of wire. And then, suddenly, four young men came on to the platform and the crowd began to scream and yell; even the Rossetti-girl opened her mouth and shrieked, but any sound she made was quite lost in the noise all around. Miss Carlton shrank a little, assaulted by the din.

  The music, when it began, was no better. To begin with, it was far too loud: the very ground seemed to throb with it, Miss Carlton decided that something must be wrong with the microphones, but then, looking at the unconcerned faces around her, changed her mind. However, she soon discovered that by the simple expedient of turning down her deaf-aid she could reduce the sound to a distant murmur, in no way offensive. Thus insulated, she was able to appreciate the spectacle and the company without any aural discomfort.

  She gave herself up to enjoyment. Just to sit among these people was to experience a sense of release. Here she was, at last – too late, but at last – surrounded by people who were as she had longed, once, to be. Young people free to follow the direction of their own creative urges, unfettered by social conventions, released from the restraints of conformity. They were the heirs, half a century later, of those little pioneer groups, the brave and the fortunate, who had escaped the Edwardian world to feed in the lush pastures of Art and Literature. And there were so many of them. They reached as far as the eye could see: it was amazing. Miss Carlton, aged seventy-five, had a sudden dizzying sensation that the society in which she lived was totally alien to her, that she knew nothing of it. There she was, passing quietly from one day to another in the Campden Hill house left her by her father, and there outside, all around but unknown to her, was this great new England, vibrant with sensitivity and awareness. Of course, she had always tried to keep abreast of the times. She read the newspapers, listened to the wireless, was a member of an art appreciation group, an amateur dramatic society, and a book club. But she had thought herself one of a minority – few of her friends, even, shared her tastes. Now, she realised, with a surge of excitement, things had changed beyond all possible belief. The world was simply not as it had been; here, in Hyde Park on a Saturday afternoon, was the stuff of which it was made now, the new generation. It was a heady moment; just to look at her companions, to project herself into what their lives must be, gave her a thrill. She studied their faces, tried to penetrate for herself the wide-ranging thoughts in their heads, longed to eavesdrop their conversations. She noted girls with the delicate features of Botticelli angels and madonnas, appropriately clad in dresses that floated and swam around their thin bodies. She slanted cautious stares (sideways, not to be too obvious) at young men plumed like tropical birds, hung about with velvet and satin, their faces whiskered and
bearded, the faces of artists, poets and playwrights. It was as though she had strayed, all accidentally, into the cultural nub of England, the very nerve-centre of the nation, and she felt appropriately awed. She did not want to participate, but she wanted most desperately to absorb all that there was to be absorbed. That, at least, she was owed by the grudging Fate that had cheated her of experience. These fortunate people, born into a more generous age, could allow her at least a vicarious taste of their more expansive lives.

  The song finished and the performers left the platform. It seemed that there was to be a short interval. Miss Carlton edged herself closer to the pair of young men behind her, velvet-jacketed youths with the faces of desperate Chekhov heroes, all sideboards and silky whiskers, and listened unashamedly to their conversation.

  ‘You get fantastic suspension, on a BMW.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Great acceleration, too.’

  ‘What about the m.p.g.?’

  ‘Thirty or so. 'Course, you got to remember there's a higher premium on a sports job.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Miss Carlton was disappointed. It was inevitable, though, that the conversation of people closely attuned to one another's patterns of thought should have an allusive, excluding quality. She abandoned the young men and turned her attention to the group of girls on either side, exquisite creatures, all long hair and pale, oval faces, like Primaveras dumped down on the dry London grass. Their exchanges were equally baffling.

  ‘Thirty-eight fifty, with lunch vouchers. And no Saturdays.’

  ‘That's fantastic. Commission?’

  ‘Ten per cent.’

  ‘Great.’

  Frustrated, Miss Carlton decided that there was nothing for it but a direct approach. She would resume contact with the young man and the girl in front of her. She had been thinking about them in particular during the song, and was filled with a deep curiosity. The young man, for instance: what did he do when he was not listening to music in Hyde Park? It was hard to envisage him in other, more mundane, situations, but presumably he had to support himself in some way, unless, of course, he had private means.

  She leaned towards him and tapped his knee. ‘Please forgive me – I hope you won't think me impertinent – but I should so very much like to know more about you. Do you have a job – or are you some kind of student?’ She hoped she had not offended him by her curiosity.

  He turned his saint-like face towards her and contemplated her. ‘I'm with the Thames Gas Board,’ he said.

  Miss Carlton was thunderstruck. For a moment she thought it was a joke, and was about to laugh, and then she caught sight of the dead-pan face of the girl, dead-pan not in collusion but acquiescence, and choked back the laugh.

  ‘He's a fitter,’ said the girl. ‘When your cooker busts it's him comes along to fix it. Eh, Len?’ She nudged her companion and he said, ‘Yeah. That's about it.’

  Shaken, Miss Carlton looked again at the man's thin, ascetic face. It was a face she knew well: it looked at you, almond-eyed, tilted at unnatural angles, from Russian icons; it stared through encrustations of brown varnish from the walls of the National Gallery; gilt-haloed, it watched you from triptychs in Italian churches.

  And there was, after all, no reason why it should not also be the face of a young man who repaired gas cookers. Miss Carlton decided to probe further. Her first question had been met not with resentment, but indifference.

  She said, ‘Are you enjoying the music?’

  ‘It's all right.’

  ‘Are the performers especially talented, or merely average?’

  ‘They're all right.’

  The lack of commitment was disturbing. Miss Carlton, studying the faces of the young couple, had to admit to herself that they had a quality of flatness. The features were beautiful, but flat. There was no animation. Miss Carlton had always believed that feelings showed. Inner qualities were displayed in a face. This belief had brought her much pleasure – in buses, on trains, in shops. She turned to the girl. ‘And what do you do, my dear?’

  ‘I'm still at school, aren't I?’ said the girl. ‘Roll on July, that's what I say.’

  Miss Carlton was surprised: she had not realised the child was so young. ‘And what are your plans after that?’ she asked hopefully. She had – a few minutes ago – had an interesting future mapped out for her: art school, the Royal College of Music, a university.

  ‘I dunno,’ said the girl. ‘I'm not bothered. I may go on the gift counter at Boots. My sister's there.’

  Miss Carlton was silent. After a moment she said, ‘You hadn't thought of any – well, further training?’

  ‘Training for what?’

  Miss Carlton plunged. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘that with your – well, with your nice taste in clothes, that dress is really quite charming – that perhaps you might be artistic. Are you at all interested in painting?’

  She had their attention. The young man, in the act of lighting a cigarette, lowered his hand and turned brown eyes upon her. Surprise and self-consciousness lent a new depth to the girl's features; she smoothed down her dress, patted a strand of hair.

  ‘They had one of my drawings up in the art room at school.’

  ‘Hey!’ said the young man. ‘What's all this, then?’

  Miss Carlton beamed encouragement.

  ‘My friend Eileen,’ said the girl, ‘she got a job as a window-dresser with the Co-op.’

  ‘That the one with the frizzy hair?’ said the young man.

  ‘Yeah. Anyway,’ the girl went on decidedly, ‘I'm not staying on at school, am I? I'm leaving, July.’

  The conversation withered. Miss Carlton was beginning to feel dispirited. Her folding chair was uncomfortable, the place was hot and dusty. The music had started up again and battered the whole city, it seemed, for the duration of the next song. Miss Carlton's deaf-aid had revealed some fundamental deficiency and no longer filtered the sound as it had before. She was obliged to listen to the singer, a manic creature who sang of love in tones of strangled loathing. It was a relief to see him subside, at last, in a Laocoön tangle of wires and microphones. Miss Carlton took out her handkerchief and wiped her forehead. She was perspiring most unpleasantly, and would have liked a cup of tea. The young man was slumped with his head in his hands, apparently dozing, and the girl was studying her own hair with minute attention. She prodded her companion and said, ‘Eh, you! I've got split ends.’ He made no reply.

  Fragmented talk reached Miss Carlton. A man and a girl picked their way through the crowd, brushing past without apology, and their conversation floated down to her: they had loud, educated voices and spoke of car racing. ‘Fantastic!’ they said. ‘Really great!’ The young men she had listened to before were dicussing the money earned by the singer who had just been heard. ‘A thousand quid a week, easily, and he'll dodge the tax somehow.’ ‘The Dead Beats get five for a concert.’ The girl, abandoning the investigation of her hair, said, ‘My mum's going into hospital, Monday.’ The young man lifted his head for a moment and said, ‘Do you mind? Who wants to hear about Monday on a Saturday afternoon?’ And she said, ‘Sorry, Len.’ Somewhere a baby cried; two girls were dancing together; skeins of midges hung in the sunlight; on the platform instruments were being assembled for the next song. Miss Carlton got to her feet with difficulty. She folded the stool and stowed it away in her bag. She looked down at the young man and the girl and said, ‘Goodbye. It was so nice to talk to you,’ and they nodded. There was a momentary distortion of the girl's features that was not a smile but might have been some kind of acknowledgement.

  Miss Carlton extracted herself from the crowd. It took some time; bodies protruded wherever she tried to put her feet. She saw things she would have preferred not to see. Nobody looked at her or responded to her apologies, though she felt as alien and conspicuous now as a clothed person among sunbathers. A faint smell lifted from the crowd, of sweat, hair and cheap scent. There were flies and discarded cigarette packets and litt
le piles of dog mess. Miss Carlton battled on, and reached the point at last where the crowd began to diminish, like a nebula disintegrating at the rim. She was able to walk without interruption; behind her, the music crashed again, but with reduced volume. And behind her, also, sat and sprawled the young people in their floating dresses, their silks and velvets, their wide-brimmed hats and their strange, misleading faces.

  Miss Carlton walked to the Round Pond. She sat down on a bench and saw small, white-winged yachts skim to and fro. Gulls rode above her head on translucent wings. The water was delicately pleated by the wind; squadrons of ducks moved to and fro. Under the water, Miss Carlton knew, was a disagreeable deposit of old Coke bottles and rusty tins, but it was pointless to dwell on that. All around the edge of the pond were small children, skipping, playing with balls, doing things with boats. Miss Carlton had never much cared for children, but she found herself looking at them intently, noticing, for the first time, it seemed, their small unformed features across which emotion and involvement flitted like the shadows of the birds on the water.

  Revenant as Typewriter

  MURIEL RACKHAM, reaching the penultimate page of her talk, spoke with one eye upon the public library clock. The paper (‘Ghosts: an analysis of their fictional and historic function’) lasted precisely fifty-one minutes, as she well knew, but the stamina of the Ilmington Literary and Philosophical Society was problematic; an elderly man in the back row had been asleep since page seven, and there was a certain amount of shuffle and fidget in the middle reaches of the thirty-odd seats occupied by the society's membership. Muriel skipped two paragraphs and moved into the concluding phase; it had perhaps been rash (not to say wasteful) to use on this occasion a paper that had had a considerable success at the English Studies Conference and with her colleagues at the College Senior Seminar, but she had nothing much else written up at the moment and had felt disinclined to produce a piece especially for the occasion. She paused (nothing like silence to induce attention) and went on: ‘So, leaving aside for the moment its literary role as vehicle for authorial comment in characters as diverse as Hamlet's father and Peter Quint, let us in conclusion try to summarise the historic function of the ghost – define as far as we can its social purpose, try to see why people needed ghosts and what they used them for. We've already paid tribute to that great source book for the student of the folkloric ghost – Dr Katharine Briggs' Dictionary of British Folk-Tales – of which I think it was Bernard Levin who remarked in a review that a glance down its list of Tale-Types and Motifs disposes once and for all of the notion that the British are a phlegmatic and unfanciful people.’ (She paused at this point for the ripple of appreciative amusement that should run through the audience, but the Ilmington Lit. and Phil. sat unmoved; there were two sleepers now in the back row.) ‘… We've looked already at the repetitious nature of Motifs-Ghost follows its own corpse, reading the funeral service silently; Ghost laid when treasure is unearthed; Revenant as hare; Revenant in human form; Wraith appears to person in bedroom; Ghost haunts scene of former crime; Ghost exercises power through possessions of its lifetime – and so on and so forth. The subject-matter of ghostly folklore, in fact, perfectly supports the thesis of Keith Thomas in his book Religion and the Decline of Magic that the historic ghost is no random or frivolous character but fulfils a particular social need – in a society where the arm of the law is short it serves to draw attention to the unpunished crime, to seek the rectification of wrongs, to act as a reminder of the past, to …’