‘You’ll see. I’m going to watch this weekend with great interest.’
‘I hope you won’t be disappointed.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Matt smiled to himself, sure in his own mind though he did not quite understand why that this was some kind of test; it wasn’t just circumstances that set them on the road to Lexbourne. He felt it had been in her thoughts for some time. He was about to be measured against some yardstick though this he knew was only his own crude way of seeing it. Hers would be more subtle so that if he’d said, ‘Why did you do it?’ she would have answered, ‘Do what? What do you mean?’ And when he had explained, ‘But it wasn’t meant to be that. I didn’t think of it as that.’ And she would be right too. In his process of over-simplification he would have distorted as he so often did. On the other hand her responses to situations seemed to him so subtle and complex as to be incommunicable. He knew his own limitations. Unable to accept anything that was inexpressible in ordinary human terms he sometimes found himself at the brink of wondering whether she loved him at all. ‘Do you love me?’ he would ask and when she answered with a simple, ‘Yes,’ he would be disappointed, left wondering what she meant by it, with no apprehension of what it was like to love him and therefore no real conviction that this state really existed. He was forced to guide himself by her actions like a blind man feeling round a wall. Still I’ve learned something, he thought as he drove, I don’t nag at it any more as I did with Jill so maybe there’s more hope, maybe I shall grow out of it, not to care, simply to accept things for what they seem to be without question. ‘That’s the difference between us,’ he remembered saying once, ‘I don’t like not knowing something. You don’t mind do you?’ And she’d answered, ‘A little mystery is always intriguing like a present I haven’t unwrapped. I like to turn it over and look at it. I know I shall know what it is in the end.’ He could have said then that she had a security he didn’t feel in her. He would probably never know, was what he felt but now he didn’t voice this as he would have done once. He added it to the store of things he was learning that one had to do without, realising the childishness of roaring for the moon.
Briefly, as they drove along the front through Lexbourne, the sun patched the sea with light and then was gone again. ‘There’s a car park at the back of the hotel. We can drive straight in,’ she directed him. Latham Court Hotel stood a little on the other side of the town in its own grounds, facing the sea. It had been built earlier than its neighbours when proportions were still important and there was a fancy for wrought iron balconies and elegant verandas on which to take the maximum of sea air with the minimum of sun so undesirable for a delicate complexion.
‘Stag owns this does she?’ Matt looked up at the immaculate frontage and round at the beautifully kept grounds.
‘She has three more now I believe but this is her favourite perhaps because it was the first. They’re none of them large.’
‘But rather exclusive I should think and expensive.’
‘I suppose they must be. I’ve never thought about it.’ He realised that she had simply come and gone as a guest without it ever occurring to her to ask who paid. He hoped silently that they would accept a cheque knowing at once that he hadn’t brought that sort of money with him. He took their small case out of the car and followed her into reception where the attractive girl behind the desk was smiling and chatting, obviously an old friend.
‘This is Irene, Kay’s secretary.’ He shook hands wondering who Kay was.
‘She’s put you in number seven. If you’d like to have a wash and then go up.’ Rae nodded and moved towards the lift.
‘We’ll see you later Irene?’
‘Oh yes. I’ll be up for lunch.’
‘Who’s Kay?’ he asked as the lift carried them up.
‘Stag of course. Stag’s only a private nickname. We don’t actually call her that to her face.’
‘The bed looks alright anyway. Thank God we haven’t got to huddle together in a single. Much as I love you it’s nice to have a bed that’s big enough to get away. And the view darling, look at the view. It’s as if there were nothing between you and the sea.’
She opened a door. ‘Here’s our private bath.’
‘It’s nice to lie in clover occasionally.’ He wondered whether to mention the cost but decided against it. ‘I wouldn’t mind staying in this room for the next two days with you. Could we have our meals sent up do you think?’
She laughed. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got to sing for our supper. Let’s get tidied and go up to the studio. That’s what Stag’s private suite is called. Because it’s right at the top I suppose and would make a splendid workroom for an artist. I’m hungry.’
‘You mustn’t keep calling her that or I shall forget myself. Will you tell me the origin of it sometime?’
‘I don’t think I’ll have to unless I’m very wrong about something.’
‘Should I put on another shirt?’
‘No, not now. Save it for later. Shall we go up then?’
The lift took them right to the top this time and they stepped out into an entrance hall where Irene met them again still smiling gently and led them towards the lounge. As she pushed open the door a woman got up from the long low sofa and came towards them crying out some words of greeting that were lost on Matt because at that moment a huge herring gull planed across the expanse of glass that was one wall, sobbing and mocking until the whole room was full of its sad demented laughter. He shook hands and began to take stock. Stag was dark and handsome with a startling white streak bleached into her hair above the forehead. She was immensely at ease; her very tone of voice calculated to impress with firmness and control. The formal words of welcome dropped neatly from her lips in clear rounded syllables. He felt an urge to stutter and shuffle his feet and it wasn’t just the difference in age although he judged her several years older than Rae. For the first time he knew the smell of wealth, not money which is tangible and carries the reek of all the palms that have handled it leaving a little of their feverish sweat imprinted on it but invisible wealth untouched by human hand and with the fresh smell of uncut pages in a book, a leather wallet just out of its tissue paper wrappings, new carpets. As his feet moved through the thick pile on the floor to stand before the fire wrapped in a silky white fleece he felt himself surrounded by an audience of unruffled faces which were gazing at him with slight amusement and suggesting that he should perform. Desperately he pushed down the childish obstinacy and rudeness that kept rising in him and accepted a drink. Why should I feel like this? he wondered.
Stag dispensed the drinks from a gleaming bar in the corner of the room. He forced a compliment on it in an effort to find something to say.
‘I’m glad you like it. I’m rather pleased with it myself.’
‘Kay actually made it,’ Rae explained. Matt doubled his compliments while thinking that it had been a meaningless labour consonant with Churchill’s rockeries and swimming pool built with his own hands when the streets swarmed with unemployed; a rich man’s indulgence perhaps because he felt himself out of a job. What is the matter with me today? Why should I carp at everything like this?
‘Are you hungry?’ Stag asked. ‘I thought we could have a cold lunch and then if it stays fine go for a trip in the boat this afternoon. I know Rae likes that. Irene, hand round some plates and things will you. I hope you like lobster. I’ll open some champagne. I always have it with lunch as a kind of pick me up after the morning. I take it like a tonic.’
Oh I know your trouble, Matt thought to himself, it’s just rank jealousy. Champagne and lobster, and trips in the boat. Why didn’t she warn me it would be like this? Maybe because she knew I wouldn’t have come. Well you’ll have to get over it somehow my son because there’s a hell of a lot of weekend in front of you and jealousy isn’t a very becoming emotion however romantic the opera tries to make it.
‘You know I envy you being able to wear what you like.’ Stag looked down at M
att’s slacks and then up at the dark blue sweater and open-necked shirt. ‘I have to compromise such a lot because of my work. That’s why I like to get away in the boat as much as I can. I think the weather’s going to be kind to us this afternoon.’
‘I don’t suppose it really matters, the clothes I mean except that all clothing is a kind of mask. You know the theory behind the use of masks of course: that the mask, once you’ve seen yourself in it, works inwards upon the personality until in fact you become what you see yourself as; I think it’s the same with all clothes. The opposite is also true of course: that you choose the mask you find expresses what you see yourself as or want to be seen as.’
‘That’s very interesting. Do you really think it’s as complicated as that. Couldn’t it just be that one likes certain clothes and feels at home in them?’
‘I think you’re probably both saying the same thing in different ways,’ Rae put in, carefully spooning stuffed olives on to her plate. ‘Matt is perhaps taking it further back and trying to explain why one feels at home in them.’
‘I don’t think it mattered so much when clothes were more similar, when everyone wore a version of the tunic and the cloak for instance but having a more complex and fragmented society has made our clothes like it too so that we not only have sexual differences but class and occupation as well all expressed in what we wear and how.’
‘Surely there isn’t as much variation as there used to be before the war for instance?’
‘I think it’s more subtle but the classifications are still there. Given half a dozen people in a line-up one could still more or less pick out their status and background from what they were wearing and I don’t think there would be many mistakes. The other interesting thing is the number of people who complain because they find it harder to tell than they did as you say before the war. Readers’ letters to the papers are full of it and so are the more pandering articles in the tabloids. They like to see the distinctions clearly because they prefer to respond to other people as types rather than individuals. Take this business of working class boys growing their hair long in imitation of their favourite pop groups. It upsets people for two reasons or even three. One because they can’t tell them from girls and so there’s a sexual confusion and an implication of softness and homosexuality among boys, and they might even get deceived themselves and find they’ve been attracted by a boy by mistake. Then too how can they maintain their own position of superiority if men look like women. Secondly longhairs in this country have always been considered intellectuals and artists and that for most people means anarchists and layabouts. From this they expect them to behave in an anarchic way and so they do, as witness all this fighting and ganging up on each other in the seaside towns. The third thing is a class confusion. It’s always been the prerogative of the upper classes to wear their hair long in this country particularly when going through a phase such as being an undergraduate and now fifteen-year-old teaboys on a building site are doing it. Funnily enough you can reckon that anyone who wears his hair long almost certainly isn’t queer. He’d be too vulnerable so I’ve never seen so many neat heads as among David and his friends. The blow wave and the shampoo and set but not a hair out of place. It’s fear and insecurity of course that makes people cling to their rigid distinctions. I was in a pub the other day when the draymen came with the week’s delivery. One of them was a tall slim muscular boy of about nineteen with long golden curls. A fat little man in the bar who’s been telling a few blue tales and throwing his weight about a bit spotted this boy rolling barrels and when the carman came in with the invoice and the others all walked through into the public for their drink he asked the foreman if he’d got girls working for him now. The foreman turned round very quickly and said that the boy was one of the best workmen he’d ever had, extremely strong and likely to pick the fat man up by the scruff of his neck and pitch him outside if he was annoyed although normally an easy-going lad and well-liked by his mates. The little man tried to bluster and carry it off, looking round for support but I’m afraid he didn’t get any and least of all from me.’ He paused, realised he had been making a speech and that no one was applauding, went to the bar and helped himself to more champagne though mentally registering that he didn’t like it anymore now than he had the first time he tasted it at somebody’s wedding but that he had better stick to it and not mix his drinks in case he was expected to drive anywhere. He found Irene at his elbow offering him pickled walnuts and smiled at her gratefully wondering how she fitted in to the set-up. Obviously she was in the know or she wouldn’t be there. Perhaps she was Stag’s little bit of overtime; a variation on the secretary on the boss’s knee. That’s bloody coarse, he thought, but then I feel coarse. He would have liked to have taken Irene away to some quiet spot and made love to her. Now why is this, he wondered again, and looked across the room to where Stag was talking quietly and earnestly to Rae. That’s it, that’s the answer. You want your own back. You want to prove something to yourself, that she’s not just with you because for some reason she can’t have Stag: simple sexual jealousy of someone who knew her before, who knows the shape of her body, its feel. Who’s made love to her and knows what she’s like when … He gulped at the thin fizzy wine.
‘Have you known Rae long?’
‘About eight years I suppose. She met Kay in the army didn’t she?’
‘I don’t really know. It’s all a mystery to me.’
‘What are you two talking about?’ Stag called across.
‘You as a matter of fact. We were wondering when you met and where.’
‘It was the army wasn’t it?’ Irene looked at Stag for confirmation. She’s in love with her, Matt thought, Stag can do no wrong there that’s obvious.
‘Almost the end of the war wasn’t it? Rae signed on at the last minute didn’t you?’
‘And got out again as quickly as possible when I realised what a mistake I’d made.’
‘I’m surprised you ever went in,’ Matt said.
‘Oh I was very young and wanting to get away from home. I hadn’t really gone into it deeply. Besides we’d almost come to accept war as a condition of being. There didn’t seem anything strange or immoral in it to someone who’d been brought up in it. It clouded all our thinking. Then they dropped the bomb of course and that made it impossible for me ever to see things in that way again. It made nonsense of any talk about human rights or which side was God’s or humanity’s. Anyway that’s how I felt. I hated army life too which didn’t help.’
‘Rae was rather disappointed in me I think because I stayed on a little longer.’
‘But then you liked the life.’
‘Oh yes. I didn’t mind it.’
‘Kay was an officer. It was rather different for them.’
‘I think you’d have liked it Matt.’ Stag poured herself another drink.
‘I don’t think you know Matt well enough,’ Rae suggested. ‘It wouldn’t do at all.’
‘I’d love the chance to wear a uniform and parade around of course, at least part of me would but the whole business is so contrary to everything I believe that I’m afraid I’ll never get the chance. By nature I’m inclined to be militant, even violent at times, but I can’t kid myself it’s a good thing, that there’s any virtue in it so I can’t indulge myself. It comes out sometimes when I’ve had too much to drink. Then I’m inclined to beat my wife, aren’t I, but on the whole I try not to.’
‘In that case we’d better take your glass away now,’ Stag laughed. ‘What about clothes for this afternoon by the way? You might get a little damp. Can we lend you something?’
‘We brought jeans and canvas shoes with us,’ Rae answered, ‘so we should be alright.’
‘Did we? That was clever of us.’
‘I packed them thinking something like this might happen.’
‘Hoping you mean. If we’ve all finished then we might as well change and get down there before the weather alters its mind. The trailer’s all hooked u
p ready. I did it this morning. We’ll go in my car shall we? I expect you’ve had enough of driving for today.’
They drove down to the harbour with Stag’s gleaming toy trundling behind them over the sullen grey flagstones of the quayside that was already alive with visitors and fishermen although the holiday season was hardly under way yet. But there is something about a harbour that draws a crowd to compose themselves into a brightly coloured picture against the natural background of sea and sky and old stone walls. The fishermen were genuine enough humping their flat boxes of evilly grinning dogfish out of their boats, barefoot in their navyblue, across the cobbles to the little fishmarket. The visitors too, children hanging excitedly over the sea wall pointing and exclaiming as boats came and went while their parents stood back a little observing quietly, happy to have tired minds and bodies rested by the different images of bobbing boats, and inexorable cloud drift, by the shifting patterns that broke and reformed of people who existed more as shape and colour than as complex entities demanding a response, but looking round at his own group Matt felt complete phoney. There was no other word for it. He had always despised what he called ‘the floaty-boat types’ with their loud voices and tortured diphthongs, their fanatic devotion to tiny details of positioning fenders and boathooks, their theatrical comings and goings on mysterious and vital errands so that the watchers could admire their gaily expensive anaraks and Norwegian sweaters. He hated them for making a business of pleasure and for flaunting their good luck in front of people whom they would despise for taking trips round the lighthouse on the Marybelle, and now he was one of them.
The Microcosm Page 26