The house is dark as he approaches. Bedroom, drawing room, attic windows and all in between unlit, as if sleeping or abandoned. He cannot remember seeing it so, aside from the night they moved in, and as he makes his way up the gravel drive the sound of his own footsteps seems detached from his own tread, as if in a dream, displaced.
Edward Mackley followed this dreaming path many times over; he dreamed of coming home, and knew with the certainty of nightmares that all the rooms were dark and empty; that they were occupied by others who would not know him, and would not allow him in; that his own family, his wife, would not know him, and would scream at his blackened skin; that all within were slaughtered, somehow by his hand. But always he woke before the door could open, and could recall only how close he had come, how he had almost reached the end of his long journey home, and cursed himself for waking.
Now Simon approaches the house and sees, in that space of a few crunching gravelled steps, visions of Julia at the centre of the darkness, waiting for him, knowing somehow what he has done and unable to forgive him for a single kiss, for even contemplating betrayal for an instant; sitting waiting in the darkness submerged in cold black water. He does not know if he will tell her the truth, if it would hurt her irreparably to do so and who he would in truth be sparing if he spared her that. He does not know if the truth is always necessary, if it is sometimes better to conceal, or if that is merely selfishness, and if selfishness is inherently wrong. He knows only that he does not want to lose her, and also that he cannot go on with it as it is. He cannot go on failing to fulfil what she lacks, aching to fill the emptiness she won’t acknowledge, whatever it is that she is without.
He has reached the door, keys in hand; he opens it cautiously (9.18). Creeping inside, he can just make out the dying flowers, the mirror (he avoids the spectral version of himself therein, the pale face and guilt-darkened eyes); he calls her name. There is no answer. He smells lamb cooking, knows she wants to please him and hopes it isn’t spoiled. But he told her he would be late home.
He must slam the door to close it; the reverberation shudders the air into a thousand pairs of fluttering wings, clamouring about him in a panic and settling back into dusty slumber. He calls her name again, ‘Julia?’, gently, as if she is already beside him, invisible; as if he wishes to summon just this one of the spirits without agitating the rest.
In the drawing room, the ladies’ white forms in the portraits are brilliant in the darkness, a full moon opposite a crescent; Edward’s and John’s shadowed eyes, across from each other, watch their living likeness pass between as Simon runs the gauntlet of her ancestors without turning the light on. He moves into the dining room. The crystal and glass catch facets of yellow light; the doors to the conservatory are open to reveal a table set with silver, candlelit, and beyond, looking out to the garden, is Julia.
There she stands: facing out to the night, her back to him, her loose hair flickering bronze. Strange how peaceful she looks, framed by the square panes of the open French doors, as if part of a painting in which the artist has imposed the same muted blue upon the stillness of the garden beyond and the unwitting sitter’s repose. She does not move as he watches from the darkness at the back of her. Nothing stirs; the night is silent. It would be possible now to creep behind her, slip off shoes and pad across the rug and step out onto the warm tiled floor, and sweep her hair forward from her neck and blow upon it gently, or kiss the sharp nub of her spine just below the nape, just where the fine fronds curl and wisp, put a hand to her waist and let her head fall against the breastbone behind her…
Simon watches. He finds that he is holding his breath, and lets it out very gently, soundless. Then he steals out into the corridor, and down the short flight of steps to the kitchen, turning no lights on; it is hot, the oven has been on for hours and, he sees from its orange glow, is keeping dinner warm; but still he unlatches the door, at which Tess has been idly scratching, so that she streaks out into the night before him. He makes his way up the path, like pale stepping stones over water, tiny icebergs, white on black. He does not look back at the house, so that they can both pretend she hasn’t seen him; when he reaches the shed and sneaks a glance back to the conservatory, she is gone.
But she has not gone. She has merely taken a step back into the darkness, as we will discern if we take a moment to discover the gleam of her eyes. She has retreated so that, if he were to look back, he won’t know she’s seen him. A few moments ago, she thought he was behind her, thought she felt the darkness shift to accommodate another form; she thought she felt him approach and waited, hoping, almost feeling his fingers brush the nape of her neck, but when she turned the room was empty and when she turned again, she saw him on the path in the moonlight. He did not come to find her. He does not want to find her. She wants to go to him but finds she cannot. Did he savour the scent of the meat, at least? She stares into the flame and at the moths that hover about it. She cannot go on without.
Piano
Simon is sitting at his desk in his shed. This shed, his own, is at the far end of the garden, behind the one that belongs to the house, which is full of old gardening tools and predictable cobwebs, clutter and dust, a confusion of worn wood and prongs and paint tins. Simon’s shed is tidy and clean; it smells of pine and cedar and the coal-tar pong of naphthalene — mothballs, to the layman, to protect dead wings from the living. Behind him, on the wall, a series of Brimstones, caught when he was fourteen, have settled above their names, which he wrote out proudly with a fountain pen — his first mounts, simple, delicate, greenish-white.
A set of wide, shallow drawers occupies most of the far wall. Simon sits on a straight-backed chair, from which he tends to hunch forward. In front of him is a window onto the garden, with a blackout blind. Sitting at the desk in the evenings, with the angle-poise lamp beaming bright into the garden, Simon had too many times been startled by the smack of a moth upon the pane. Although he cannot credit them with a sense of irony, still he found this pelting of furry death distasteful, in light of his occupation behind the glass. So the blind was installed to insulate him from the night.
Tonight, Simon is very still, and for once sitting straight; there is nothing before him on the desk to hunch over; the blind is open, the lamp is not lit. His expression is hard to discern in the dimness; the little light from the moon reflects on his glasses; his eyes may be open or shut. His long hands rest on the desk.
He has left Julia behind in the house, she has not seen him; he has escaped into the blue garden, warm and still, full of insect clicks and piping, heavy with the honeysuckle that for weeks he has forgotten to come out and relish the scent of. What is he doing here while she waits inside? He sat down at his desk here and found he could not turn the lamp on, he could not open the drawer or take up his tools to set a catch which should be dry now in its jar, and ready to mount; he is not sure this was ever his intention. His hand instead raised the blind, left closed to keep the space cool, and then came to rest two feet away from the other on the desk, and he has been sitting for perhaps four minutes now in this position. He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing here, while she waits inside. He does not check his watch.
He tries to steady and gather himself in the darkness, but he cannot pursue any single thought; he is at the mercy of his own memories, flitting and battering about his head, and he is powerless to drive them away. Every bitter disappointment, every grate of shame, every time he’s wished for something different from himself or someone else.
His mother, washing up at the kitchen sink, leaves soap suds on her face from the hand she swipes her cheek with so he will not see her crying. He leans against her hip, pressing his face into her, and receives a damp hard squeeze of the shoulder, quickly withdrawn with a sigh. ‘What do you want, Simon?’
He tugs at his father’s sleeve one too many times; his father’s hand slips, botches the pin, pulls away angrily. ‘What, Simon?’
They can’t afford a piano, they tell him; he will h
ave to practise at school, he will have to practise there to be the best. He plays at the concert. He gets the most applause. They say well done then praise at length the choir and Rebecca Jones who read a poem. Simon would not dare to speak or sing. He did not dare to hold the last chord quite long enough. This means that he played the last chord wrong. He mentions it, hesitant, in the car on the way home. His mother says, to comfort him, ‘I’m sure no one cared.’
Julia is surprised, delighted, to find him sitting one evening at the old piano in the drawing room. She has been out with a friend but has come home early, he did not expect her. They have known each other for ten years, they have been married for eight. She didn’t know he could play the piano. How is it possible that she didn’t know? She pleads with him to play for her. He hasn’t played for years, he says. He won’t remember. He wasn’t very good. Go on, she says. He doesn’t want to. He won’t. He shuts the lid; he doesn’t mean to bang it. She winces. Her voice is very quiet. ‘I just didn’t know you could play.’
The tips of his fingers are pressing against the wood of the desk, the rhythm of the first notes she missed this morning. His eyes are closed. He takes off his glasses without opening his eyes, pinches his nose, presses forefinger and thumb hard into the corners of the deep sockets until blue lights flash across the dark maroon; he opens them and feels the resurgent blood spread across the bridge of his nose and up across his scalp. Carefully, he sets his glasses down, stands and ventures out, closing the door softly behind him, and picks his path step by round pale step back to the house through the scented garden.
Standing at the top of the stone stair to the kitchen, he sees that the countertop light is now switched on. In the dark of the house, Julia has cast this single circle of electricity about herself. She moves beyond it and then he sees her face brightened again in the glow from the oven as she opens the door to lift out plates and dishes, blowing out her cheeks as she does so, as she always does. It is a gesture so familiar that he could not recall now the first time he saw it (it was scones, on his fifth visit — he’d remember the scones, if he were reminded. If reminded, he would recall the decadence of clotted cream, the home-made jam, the contrast with the dense, claggy, margarine-spread treats of his childhood). She places the plates in the pooled light on the countertop, then presses her hands to the foil-wrapped meat, checking it hasn’t gone cold he supposes, then moves back to the hob; she is just barely lit now, a warm sheen on her skin. She stirs a pan in her ponderous way, staring into it as if she is divining something in the sauce, and lifts the wooden spoon, stretching her head towards it instead of bringing it close so as not to spill it (so that her lovely neck emerges from the mass of her hair); she puts her lips to it gingerly, holding the spoon lifted for a second after sipping, reaching for the salt and changing her mind, resuming her slow stirring with a satisfied smile which is very close to sadness. And all of this together, the fine downy arm that stirs, stirs, the peer into the pan, her long neck, the sound of that tiny sip and her sad smile, sets off a ripple in Simon which swells into a wave of tenderness, building, building, so powerful that he fears he will be drowned, which he wishes he could unleash in a great cascade down the steps before him, but he cannot unleash it and he feels something in him reaching, but still he does not know how to reach her.
Julia stirs, stirs. At the centre of the rich wine-brown sauce, a circle of glutinous bubbles bulges and pops like a swamp, satisfying to watch. Should she go out to him in the garden, tap on the door of the shed? It’s getting late. But there is an unspoken rule, that he would never ask of her, and which she yet obeys, that she does not disturb him there. But it’s getting late. But he did not come to find her; she heard the door slam and half heard him call, but only once (he only half wanted her to hear him). And then he was out in the moonlight alone, and doesn’t want her to follow. She stirs. Tastes —
No, perfect, it needs nothing. Except someone else to taste it.
Resignedly, she resumes stirring. She hears, in the garden, a purring mmrrriaow of pleasure which means that someone has stroked Tess’s fur backwards. She looks up, startled by the sound so near to her when she thought herself unseen in her little lit circle.
‘Julia…’
‘You scared me! I thought I heard the door…’
‘I’m so sorry I’m so late.’ He comes down the stairs now and into her circle of light. ‘I told you I had that meeting — but then the train was cancelled. I called when I came in but you didn’t answer so I thought you must be upstairs.’ (Although, he thinks, there were no lights on, which he couldn’t fail to have noticed, so he cannot believe his own lie; but she seems to, she doesn’t know that he noticed, she has no reason to doubt him. He cannot explain to her that he saw her standing in the darkness, and wanted to go to her but couldn’t.) She is still stirring, so that he cannot encompass her entirely as he’d like to. Instead he touches her elbow and kisses the top of her head, just as if this were any other day.
‘I was worried–I called the office and Joanne said you’d left about seven. Then I tried to phone and you didn’t answer.’ She is trying to keep the reproach out of her voice.
‘I had to meet a client for a drink. Awful man. I thought I’d told you, sorry.’ Simon knows full well that he kept the details as vague as possible; but he is relying on her inattentive morning manner and knows she will, again, believe him. And this is anyway not quite a lie, but a conflation and omission of truths — which still feels as nasty and spineless as a lie. ‘I tried to call you back but the line was engaged.’
‘Oh, I was speaking to Miranda maybe — I’m sure you did tell me. It doesn’t matter, you’re home now. How was your day?’
‘Hm, you know. The usual. How’s Miranda?’
‘She’s fine, she… I had a bit of an odd day, actually. With Jonathan.’
‘Ah, I’d forgotten.’
Julia has put down her spoon now. She turns to him with a strange soft sad look about her, which he can’t remember seeing before. ‘Simon…’ A hand, hesitant, on his chest; then her head laid gently beside it. He holds it to his breastbone and strokes the small of her back with his thumb, and kisses again, more tenderly this time, the top of her head. He thinks she may be crying but when he takes her shoulders and holds her away, forcing himself to meet her eyes, he sees only that same softness, as if she is trying to say something. For a moment longer they stay there, wordless, as if about to speak.
And then, because it all happened a hundred years ago, and now it’s late on a Thursday, and she has opened a good bottle of wine, she gives herself a little shake and says:
‘Hungry?’
‘Absolutely. I hope I’m not too late.’
‘Well, a minute later and it would have been Tess’s lucky day — but you know her table manners are appalling. I’d much rather eat with you.’
‘Why don’t you serve up and I’ll go and put some music on,’ he says, with a last squeeze of her elbow.
Tess, who has followed Simon down to the kitchen, has for the duration of this exchange been noisily licking up the last of her fish, the plastic bowl scraping on the tiles; having heard her name mentioned and seen them looking down at her, she has taken this as an invitation and is now attentively, affectionately curling about Julia’s ankles, in the hope of a scrap of fresh-cut meat. Julia is somehow able to move freely, unconstrained by this furry figure of eight; she takes a shred of the meat’s crust and drops it into the waiting maw. Tess carries her morsel to a corner, pins it carefully with a paw and gnaws at it contentedly.
Julia carves the lamb onto warmed plates, perfectly tender and not spoiled at all. A sequence of notes creeps up on her from the drawing room. The theme is familiar, but she cannot place it. She wonders what he has chosen; it is not their habit to listen to music together, it is one of his secret provinces. He is making her an offering, she thinks. She has to strain to hear; has it stopped? No, there again; the same sequence a little stronger this time, it seems to loop into its
elf, this tune; whatever it is, she likes it. It halts and trips and goes on; a wrong note? What would she know — but yes, there again, a pause and corrective repeat. This is not a recording. Someone is playing the piano.
On quiet evenings, when the Mackleys were not entertaining, the family retired to the drawing room to play cards, to converse, to read, to smoke. These were the days when leisure was an organized affair, when the hours before bedtime were structured and edifying, before the century slumped into passivity. Every large house then had its piano; the Mackleys’ was largely neglected aside from social occasions, upon which Jane Whitstable (or some such) would warble her way through a repertoire of pastoral ditties and German folk song, to the plodding accompaniment of whichever young man most hopelessly admired her. John would occasionally strike up at Christmas; Arabella had no ear. It was brushed far more often by a maid’s duster than by a musician’s touch.
But John came in from town one afternoon in the early spring of 1901 to hear, as he handed over his coat and hat in the hallway, the sound of a favourite sonata played with simple elegance and passion — so much of the latter that Emily did not hear him greeted at the door — and of course in those days the wood had not yet swelled and there was no slam to alert her. He came into the room to find his sister-in-law seated there, eyes closed as her long quick fingers found the keys, unerring; her thumb finished a phrase with the barest depression of the ivory, sliding off as her foot held the pedal for a moment longer, and as her foot lifted she lifted her head too and saw him, and the blush of her fervour darkened to its deepest crimson.
The Still Point Page 25