Pack of Cards

by Penelope Lively

  Lisa came back for the children once she'd found a flat. She'd had her hair cut off and what was left was like a little boy's, all smoothed into the back of her neck; it made her look about sixteen. Lisa is very small and thin, I should say; people always offer to carry suitcases for her, if you see her doing anything involving effort you automatically find yourself offering to do it for her because you feel she won't be able to manage and anyway it makes you feel guilty watching her.

  She said the hair was symbolic; she was making a fresh start and getting rid of the atmosphere that had been holding her back (I suppose she meant poor Melvyn) and actually everything was going to be good because Ravi's father who was an Indian businessman and quite rich was going to buy a little gallery in Islington that Ravi was going to run and she was frantically busy getting enough stuff together for an exhibition.

  The gallery didn't last long because it kept losing money and after a bit Ravi's father, who turned out to be quite an ordinary businessman after all and not as sensitive and interested in art as Lisa had thought, said he was cutting his losses and selling up. In fact Ravi and Lisa weren't living together by then anyway because Lisa had realised that the reason her work wasn't really right was that she'd always been in cities and in fact what she needed to fulfil herself properly was to get away somewhere remote and live a very simple, hard-working life. Actually, she thought, pottery was the right medium for her, once she could scrape up enough for a wheel and everything.

  Mother helped out with that, financially, and Lisa took the children down to this place in Somerset where a man she knew, someone quite rich, had this big old house that was a sort of commune for artists, and for parties of young people to come and study nature and the environment. We went down there, once when Lisa wanted us to take Alex for a bit, because he'd not been well and she was finding it a bit of a strain coping with him. There was certainly a lot of environment there, it was miles from anywhere, except the village, and there wasn't much of that, so that there seemed to be more artists than ordinary village people. It was a hot summer and Lisa and the rest were going round with just about no clothes on, more like the south of France than west Somerset and I rather got the impression that some of the older village people didn't like it all that much, and there was an outdoor pop festival one weekend that went on to all hours, and this man who owned the place had made the church into an exhibition room for the artists. It was one of those little grey stone churches with old carvings and so on and it looked queer, all done out inside with huge violent-coloured paintings and peculiar sculptures. Lisa said actually it was frightfully good for these people, to be exposed to a today kind of life, they were so cut off down there, and to be given the sort of visual shock that might get them really looking and thinking.

  Eventually Lisa began to feel a bit cut off herself, and there'd been some trouble with the county child care people which Lisa said was a lot of ridiculous fuss, it was just that Francesca had got this funny habit of wandering off sometimes and actually it was good that she felt so free and uninhibited, most people stifle their children so. Francesca was six by then, and Jason five. Jason had this bad stammer; he still has, sometimes he can't seem to get a word out for hours.

  Lisa came home to mother's for a bit then, because rents in London were sky-high and it would have meant her getting a job, which of course was out of the question, if she was going to keep up her potting, and the weaving she had got very keen on now. And at mother's she had the studio, so it might work out quite well, she thought, provided she kept in touch with people and didn't feel too much out on a limb.

  Jim and I had Alex more or less permanently by then; we are very fond of him, he seems almost like ours now which is just as well, I suppose. It is just as well too that Jim is the kind of person he is; Lisa thinks he is dull, I know, but that is just her opinion, and as I have got older I have got less and less certain that she gets things right. In fact, around this time I did have a kind of outburst, with mother, which I suppose was about Lisa, indirectly. She had gone down to London to keep in touch with people, and there had been a business with Francesca at school (sometimes she steals things, it is very awkward, they are going to have the educational psychologist people look at her) and I had had to see to it all. I was feeling a bit fed up too because what with Alex, and having so much to do, I'd realised it wasn't going to be any good trying to go back to work at the end of the year as I'd planned. Maybe you should be like Lisa, and not plan. Anyway, mother was telling me about this biography of Dylan Thomas she'd been reading, and what an extraordinary eccentric person he was and how fascinating to know. Actually I'd read the book too and personally I don't see why you shouldn't write just as good poetry without borrowing money off people all the time and telling lies.

  Once, when I was at college, one of the tutors got this well-known poet to come and give a talk to the second-year English. He had glasses with thick rims and a rather old-fashioned-looking suit and frankly he might have been somebody's father, or your bank manager. He was very friendly and he talked to us in the common-room afterwards and he wasn't rude to anyone. I told mother about it, later, and she said she wondered if he was all that good – as a poet, that is.

  And I suddenly blew up when she was going on like this about Dylan Thomas. I said – shouted – ‘T. S. Eliot worked in an office. Gustav Hoist was a bloody schoolteacher.’

  Mother looked startled. She said, ‘Who?’ She's less interested in musicians.

  I said crossly, ‘Oh, never mind. Just there's more than one way of going about things.’ And then the children started squabbling and we were distracted and the subject never came up again, not quite like that.

  Lisa got a part-share of a flat in London with a friend; she had to be down there because there was this person who was talking of setting up a craft workshop for potters and weavers and that, a fantastic new scheme, and she needed to be on the spot for when it came off. It was difficult for her to have the children there, so Francesca stayed with mother and the two little ones with us. Francesca settled down well at school and began to behave a lot better, and Jason's stammer was improving, and then all of a sudden Lisa turned up, as brown as a conker, with her hair long again, and henna-dyed now, and said she'd met these incredible Americans in Morocco, who had this atelier, and she was going to work there and learn this amazing new enamelling technique. That was what she ought to have been doing all along, she said, if only she'd realised, not messing about with pots and fabrics. She was taking the children with her, she said, because growing up in an English provincial town was so stultifying for them, and it was nice and cheap out there.

  She took Alex too, but after six months she suddenly sent him back again with a peculiar German friend of hers; we had to collect him at Heathrow. He kept wetting the bed apparently and although Lisa isn't particularly fussy about that kind of thing she said she had the feeling he wasn't very adaptable.

  And so it goes on. She came back from Morocco after a couple of years, and there was a spell in London when a rather well-off Dutch person that we thought she was going to marry bought her a house in Fulham. For six months Francesca went to a very expensive school where all the teaching was done in French, and then the Dutch person went off and Lisa found the house was rented, not paid for like she'd thought, so she came home again for a bit to sort things out, and Francesca went to the comprehensive.

  And then there was Wales with the Polish sculptor, and then the Dordogne with the tapestry people, and London again, and back here for a bit, and the cottage in Sussex that someone lent her …

  The last time she was here she had a curious creased look about her, like a dress that had been put away in a drawer and not properly hung out, and I suddenly realised that she is nearly forty now, Lisa. It doesn't seem right; she is a person that things have always been in front of, somehow, not behind.

  Mother and I cleaned out her old studio, the other day. Mother has this feeling that Francesca may be talented, in which ca
se she will need to use it. We dusted and polished and sorted out the cupboard with Lisa's old paintings and collages and whatnot. They all looked rather shabby, and somehow withered – not quite as large or bright as one had remembered. Mother said doubtfully, ‘I wonder if she would like any of these sent down to London?’ And then, ‘Of course it is a pity she has had such an unsettled sort of life.’

  That ‘had’ did not strike either of us for a moment or two. After a bit mother began to put the things away in the cupboard again, very carefully; mother is past seventy now and the stooping was awkward for her. I persuaded her to sit down and I finished off. There was one portfolio of things Lisa did at school, really nice drawings of flowers and leaves and a pencil portrait of another girl whose name neither mother nor I could remember. Mother put these aside; she thought she might have them framed and hang them in the hall. Holding them, she said, ‘Though with her temperament I suppose you could not expect that she would settle and at least she has always been free to express herself, which is the important thing.’ When I did not answer she said, ‘Isn't it, dear?’ and I said, ‘Yes. Yes, I think so, mother.’

  Presents of Fish and Game

  ‘WELL,’ SAID the Fellow in Philosophy and Senior Tutor, ‘this is a sad task. And an impossible one, too, as I see it.’ He looked round at the other members of the Committee to appoint a Fellow and Tutor in Modern History. ‘We won't find a man of Bob's standing, and that's for sure.’

  The Fellow in French said plaintively, ‘I must say he has rather left us in the lurch, taking up this appointment for January. Can we get someone else by then? Of course it's a tragedy he's leaving us.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Bursar. He added, after a moment, ‘How much does Berkeley pay?’

  A figure was suggested.

  The Bursar whistled.

  ‘Wouldn't we all?’ said the Fellow in Politics.

  ‘Personally,’ said the Senior Tutor, a little stiffly, ‘I would find the attractions resistible. However, to our muttons …’

  Muttons, thought the Fellow in Economics, who was twenty-four, and impressionable in several ways. Muttons. Hams. Thighs. He thought lovingly of a girl he knew, and addressed himself sternly to the problem of the appointment of a new Fellow in Modern History. He listened with attention to the Senior Tutor, an older and wiser man.

  ‘We have to go all out for the best chap we can get,’ the Senior Tutor was saying. ‘And no two ways about it. Put out feelers of our own – see if we can't attract some applications the advertisement may not pull in. Sound people out – you never know who may be ripe for a move.’

  The Fellow in Politics said, ‘I must say myself I'd like to see if John Herbert would be interested.’

  ‘Hasn't he got a Chair somewhere?’ said the Bursar sharply.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He'd want a stipend a bit over and above what Bob was getting, then.’

  ‘Oh come,’ said the Senior Tutor with a laugh, ‘we're not counting pennies – we're trying – in so far as it's possible – to replace one of the most distinguished scholars the College has.’

  The Fellow in Economics, who believed profoundly in the sanctity of scholarship, nodded with vehemence.

  ‘Quite,’ said the Bursar, ‘we're all with you there.’ He was scanning some sheets of figures. ‘Anyway, I'm not absolutely clear that even with economies we could give ourselves a rise this year – or possibly next either. Or get the new squash courts off the drawing-board.’

  There was a brief silence. The Fellow in Politics looked reflective. ‘I doubt if John Herbert would want to move, in fact, when it came to the point.’

  ‘I thought,’ said the Tutor in French plaintively, ‘there was no question about an increase in October. I must say it would be awfully inconvenient if …’

  The Senior Tutor cleared his throat. ‘So the usual advertisement, of course. But we look around, too. I don't think there's any doubt that we want an older man – someone with plenty of teaching experience, quite apart from the academic distinction we're looking for. The Governing Body has been getting younger over the last few years, very nice too’ – with a benign glance at the Fellow in Economics – ‘but in this instance I do feel that in replacing Bob, we must have a person of his seniority.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said the Fellow in Economics, who was sometimes taken for an undergraduate, which unnerved him.

  ‘Of course,’ said the Bursar thoughtfully, ‘wage for age …’ He did not complete the sentence, appearing distracted by some figures he was totting up.

  Today I am twenty-four, thought the Fellow in Economics, and this time last year I was twenty-three, and this time next year I shall be twenty-five and when I am thirty-five I shall get six thousand a year, or is it seven? And my FSSU contributions will be of incalculable value to the widow I do not at the moment have. He thought again of the girl he knew; the thought threatened to become improper so he pushed it firmly aside, since he was a serious young man who believed in a time and a place for everything, and this was the time and place for the administration of a distinguished academic institution. He said, with diffidence, ‘Are we going for a social historian again? Or should we possibly be thinking more of someone in the political field, since George Templer's interests …’

  ‘Of course the University will want to stick their oar in,’ said the Bursar with a yawn.

  ‘The University, I'm sure, will accept our recommendation,’ said the Senior Tutor.

  The Fellow in Politics sighed, ‘It's a pity George is on sabbatical – we could do with his advice. You know the thought does cross my mind that given we can't replace Bob, as Peter so rightly says, then I wonder if we are right in setting our sights on a very senior chap – academic distinction, yes, of course, that goes without saying, but I wonder if age is necessarily …’

  ‘I never really see the need for all this stress on publications,’ said the Fellow in French, who had none to his name.

  The Fellow in Economics, who knew himself to be undistinguished but promising, looked out of the window and observed the Bursar's secretary, who had nice legs, crossing the quad. He resolved to work very hard and write a great many books in order never to become like the Fellow in French. There were times, he had sadly to admit, when academic life was a disappointment to him. The cut and thrust of intellectual debate was not all it was held to be; some of his colleagues could spend an entire meal discussing the merits of a particular make of car. He sighed, and looked hopefully at the Senior Tutor, in whom he had faith.

  The Senior Tutor was attending to his pipe. He frowned. ‘Y – es … Possibly. Of course you don't want to feel you're getting someone whose important work is behind them, as it were.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Fellow in French, for whom this was not a problem.

  The Fellow in Politics held his hand out across the table to the Bursar. ‘Could I just have a look at those stipend scales?’

  The Fellow in Economics said, ‘From a teaching point of view, I do think the greatest need is for someone whose interests are on the political side, then he could help out with the …’

  ‘We want someone who'll teach the whole range,’ said the Fellow in French. ‘Bob used to farm out no end of people. Cost the College a lot. I can't understand this passion for specialisation,’ he added disapprovingly, having none himself.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said the Fellow in Politics, in reflective tones. ‘As much as that …’ He was doing sums on the back of the agenda.

  The Bursar leaned forward and murmured, ‘And you've got to take the housing allowance into consideration, Tony, it works out rather more like this …’ More figures were scribbled.

  The Fellow in Economics, despite his trade, had been surprised to discover how much of academic life was a matter of house-keeping. He said, a little anxiously, ‘Surely there's no question – I mean, Peter's absolutely right, we've got to get someone as good as Bob and …’

  The Fellow in Politics sat back in his c
hair looking meditative. ‘We could save, at my estimate around three or four thousand, which in terms of a capital sum …’

  ‘Would that mean …?’ said the Fellow in French, to the Bursar.

  ‘Should be O.K.,’ said the Bursar.

  The Senior Tutor said, ‘That's interesting, Tony, not of course that it's a consideration that would sway us in any way. What's really at issue is, what does the College most need – an established figure, or someone on the way up who possibly …’

  ‘I must say I think there's a lot to be said for a younger man,’ said the Fellow in French.

  ‘Under thirty,’ said the Bursar, ‘would keep us below the fifth increment on the …’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Senior Tutor hastily, with a quick glance at the Fellow in Economics, whose face perhaps betrayed a sudden wild surmise about the circumstances of his own appointment. ‘And it's not as though the College hasn't a fine reputation in History as it is, with George, and the goodwill, as it were, of Bob's fifteen years here. It's not exactly that we need a big name, in fact …’

  ‘In fact,’ put in the Fellow in Politics, ‘there is a sense in which it might be held to be incumbent on us to offer a helping hand, as it were …’

  ‘To a chap on the way up,’ said the Bursar. ‘Under thirty.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Senior Tutor, avoiding the eye of the Fellow in Economics. ‘Or, another thought occurs, which is that perhaps’ – he frowned at the Fellow in French, who was asking the Bursar if by any chance he had that latest tender for the squash court handy – ‘perhaps we might consider the idea of a lectureship, and not appoint to a fellowship at all.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Fellow in Politics thoughtfully. ‘That's an interesting idea, Peter. Or course it's perfectly true that if George agreed to increase his teaching load a little – which I'm sure in the interests of the College he'd be happy to do – and we sent out the second-year people, and possibly some of the prelim. lot, then …’