by Tim Parks
They stood staring at each other. And all at once – he could actually place the moment, the sudden surfacing of unexpected emotion – Daniel felt a great tenderness toward her for this. For having said this. He knew it wasn’t true. But how sad that even the story of our marriage has to be destroyed like this. Hilary has to destroy our marriage, because of what I am doing to her, leaving her. What you’re doing is ugly, she’d said. Yet he hadn’t seen Jane for weeks now. He hadn’t seen Jane at all since he’d left home. Why not? That’s rubbish, he said, he took his wife in his arms. There in the foyer of the Cambridge. He reached out his arms to his wife. We had great times, he said, we had Sarah and Tom, for God’s sake. For some reason he couldn’t understand he really didn’t want to see Jane. He kept making excuses. They held each other, standing by the revolving doors. People were pretending not to notice. She was rigid and weeping. It was the first embrace in weeks. You know that, he said. You can’t change that, Hilary. And though the hotel stand-off was to last almost a further month, from that moment on, that embrace in the foyer by the revolving doors, his arms tight around her rigid, resisting body, their marriage was up and running again. The rest fell away. Jane fell away. As if the most damning evidence, Daniel thought, had been improperly recorded. The police had screwed up. The case must be dropped. Of course everybody knew about Jane, as everybody knew about Robert and his suicide, her lost first love, her musical passion, but none of this would stand up in court. There has been a mistake, your honour, an oversight. In court, before a jury of their peers, there were Sarah and Tom, and actually quite a lot of good times together, well recorded in the family albums. There was a gleam of future firelight in the children’s young eyes. Then if she was never going to say what exactly she knew about Jane and who she had got that knowledge from, how could it weigh in the balance? He denied the most part – hearsay, your honour – never even hinted at the other adventures. Why should he? A jury isn’t informed of the defendant’s record. And he really had lost interest. It was strange. You can’t rewrite history, he muttered in her ear, in the foyer. I thought that’s what you were trying to do, she said.
So it was precisely in choosing to split up, worn down by years of warfare, that they had at last understood, without either entirely revealing him or herself to the other, that their destinies were inextricable; these were the roles they would play as surely as a judge must wear a wig in court. One might as well accept that. No, they should celebrate it! They must celebrate that famous suntan their children boasted. Oh I like my coffee well roasted, Hilary laughed, hugging Daniel when he came home – that colour that could only have come from them. Hilary loved his skin, the conventional British man, she said, in the mysterious foreign body: Daniel Savage!
Yet none of this quite explained their present happiness. There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Just as His Honour Judge Savage was standing to leave his room, the telephone rang. Christine said: Hilary didn’t want to bother you, Dan dear, but I insisted. Her voice was charmingly breathy. Do come and have a glass of champers before we have to wander off. I mean, it’s such a big day. We’re buying the flat. Then under her breath, and taking advantage of what sounded like Chopin in the background, she added: you know Mart always perks up when you’re there, Dan. I’m getting desperate. Evidently, Daniel thought as he put the phone down, and despite this business of their buying the flat, his friend Martin was going through one of his big depressions again. I was just on my way, he laughed.
But again the phone called him back. He had already closed the door and now had to unlock it. Daniel? Minnie asked. Can you meet me in town? Now? With what sounded like a giggle in her voice, she named a street corner in the town centre. He was beginning to explain that it would have to wait when she said, please. Please. You’ll understand why. I’m desperate. Can’t speak now. She must have put the phone down.
It would take no more than ten minutes to drive home. Daniel stood at the corner of Salisbury and Drummond. There could have been no mistake. Minnie was born and bred here. But how long did one wait? He owed the girl nothing, yet felt concerned. Christine was desperate with Martin depressed. Minnie was desperate for reasons he couldn’t imagine. Minnie was dangerous. Sheltering in the entrance to Hill’s, he stepped out on the pavement from time to time. The town was busy in the smeared neon of a rainy evening. To cover tracks, he hurried a hundred yards to the off-license and picked up champagne. Passing Kingscote Ave, he realised he risked being seen by his daughter, whose chapel was there. She called it The Chapel. Or sometimes The Community. Sarah had hurried out slamming the door, Hilary said. Unless this was The Chapel and The Community was something different somewhere else. The business of averting his face as he crossed the road brought back all sorts of memories. The subterfuge of those many mad years. How exciting it had all been! My double life. And how stupid and dangerous. Screwing a girl on the jury! During the case, damn it! A big case. Daniel laughed. A Korean girl. But it was shameful too. Truly shameful. What if I had ever found out, Daniel had often asked himself, that an opponent was screwing someone on the jury when I was defending? It was such a betrayal of one’s vocation. He did feel ashamed. I would never speak to them again. Not that it had actually affected the verdict though. And he had needed that excitement so badly then. An insatiable appetite for excitement and risk. For getting away with it. He had been mad. But like a hole in the head now, he told himself. Engaging in subterfuge now, you saw you needed it like a very big hole in the head. Changed, he decided. Suddenly staid. He frowned. He needed clarity now. Was it to do with this isolation one felt as a judge, this lonely detachment? He looked at his watch. The girl had definitely been a disappointment sexually. He remembered the clarity with which he had made that rare entry in his diary, the day they bought the house. I have become myself, he had written. Perhaps it was this rather than the crisis that explained their new happiness. Something physiological. The time of metamorphoses is over. That was how he had put it. I have grown up.
A taxi squealed at the crossing on Drummond. Daniel wanted to be home, with his wife and children, celebrating the new house, the new piano, the sale of the old, drinking champagne with good friends. A small man came hurrying through the rain to shelter in the entrance to Hill’s. An Asian, Daniel realised. He studied the cheap jewellery behind the steel grill. She had tried to explain to him how one could tell them apart, Koreans, Malaysians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese. He had never got further than excluding the Japanese. My natural parents were Brazilian, he told her. God knows what mix of races. The man turned suddenly and looked him directly in the eye. In his thirties perhaps. Awful acne. It was Minnie’s stories he remembered far more than her performance in bed. Her constant chatter in the pretty accent. As if blocked by catarrh. A very pretty girl. Better dressed than un-. Perhaps the man knew her. The Korean community was so close knit. Wasn’t that the burden of her stories? In which case she was risking exposure if she arrived now.
These are old patterns of thought, Daniel reflected. Risk assessment. Now he wanted to be home. Yet the very fact that you always saw it as a risk, that you never wished to be discovered, indicated an investment in the status quo, a desire for excitement, yes, but within a conventional framework where everything remained substantially the same. You go to the edge and no further. Hilary too had wanted an exciting life. I’m taking more of a risk than you are, Minnie had said. More than once. They had only made love four or five times. Impossible, he had laughed. Wrongly, he had imagined that she was worried about her boyfriend, her fiancé. But it seemed she despised the boy. My dad would kill me, she repeated. It was her father who terrified her. You’re twenty, Daniel told her, just leave home and do what you want. Do it. The only thing that holds you back is what’s inside your head. He wanted to help the girl. He liked her. Fuck off, she told him.
Got time please, the Asian man asked. He pointed at his wrist. Almost seven-thirty. This is ludicrous, Daniel told himself, but now it had occurred to
him that the man was somehow involved. Minnie wouldn’t come while he was there. How excitingly paranoid one became, running risks! How life fizzed. Career finished if even a whisper. Or perhaps she had arrived while he was getting the champagne and had thought he wasn’t coming. She had gone away. Half an hour is enough, Daniel told himself, clutching a cold bottle. Perhaps she was waiting for him to make a move to his car. Then she would grab his arm. We’re a tight community, she said, everybody knows I’ll marry Ben. She giggled. Poor Ben, if he could see me now! She had been naked, but quite unsexy. More a child, he remembered. He didn’t remember very much. She couldn’t see the importance of Daniel’s question, Did she really want to marry the boy? His parents were friends of the family. And in the trial, a rape trial, she hadn’t seen the importance of the long debate over the defendant’s mental health, the question of mens rea, the guilt that is in the mind. He did it, she said. He raped the old woman. Once they’ve admitted that, I don’t see why the trial has to go on. As prosecution counsel it hardly seemed Daniel Savage’s duty to argue the point.
So they’ve done it, Hilary sighed. They’ve done it! But why? Why do they want to buy our flat? Daniel and his wife were preparing for bed. I find it hard, he sighed, being with Martin these days. He’s so gloomy. It’s your fault, she told him. He doesn’t try to make you feel guilty at all. But you get defensive. He knows it was the luck of the draw.
Turning out the light, Daniel was vaguely irritated by the sound of a computer game coming from Tom’s room. How quickly elation blew over. But if he went to silence it, his wife would take the boy’s side. He had done his piano practice after all. They’re going to keep the big house too of course, Hilary said. Christine told me she thinks a pied-à-terre in town will be good when Mart has to work late, or when they want to see friends. A pied-à-terre, she laughed, our home! The flat was not that small. I just can’t see all this stuff with the funguses, Daniel said. I mean, unless you’re a scientist, I can’t see the point of him collecting toadstools and things. He photographs them. And now moths! Hilary said. Then she said she thought actually it was rather wonderful. It was original. Who else collected funguses? Who else photographed moths? You have to have something to take your mind off Archbold. He was bored with his work. And British ones to boot! British funguses. British moths. Really, it’s Christine I think, Hilary said later. They’re a bit isolated out there, she wants to be closer in to town, to escape his depressions.
They were quietly embracing when the phone rang. Daniel knew his wife had registered his sudden rigidity. Oh it’ll be silly Sarah, Hilary laughed, climbing out of bed. Another depressive! Daniel held his breath. We’ve sold the flat, love, Hilary announced at once. To Martin and Christine! Yes, yes, I know! And her husband relaxed. But why had the girl wanted to make a fool of him like that? No, you can’t, Hilary said. Her tone suddenly altered. I don’t care if it’s a Christian community. I don’t care if they’re all vestal virgins. I’ll send your father to get you at once. You’ve got important exams coming up. I said no! Give me the address again. No is no is no is no! You can’t just phone and say you’re staying out the night. A moment later Daniel was pulling on his clothes to go down to the car.
Along the ring road, girls postured at just the suggestive point where each sodium light met dark masses of hawthorn. This was one place, Daniel thought, where there had never been any need to appoint a token non-white. And there and then he decided that he could not be lenient with that poor father. He, of all people, so soon after his appointment to crown court judge, must not be seen to be soft on a man who had broken his son’s wrist. One appointed different people, a new kind of person, in order that everything remain the same, indeed to demonstrate that it had always been okay. The play could go on. It was a good play, even when Lear was black. Or Hamlet Asian. The man might break a neck next time. He might break his child’s neck. However rare his drinking bouts. By the road the police were bothering a potential client, examining a licence. The truck was foreign. Aware that he himself might be marginally over the limit, Daniel concentrated on his driving and, wondering now how long exactly the sentence should be, overshot the road the first time. Broughton Street. Then found it. Good. He made the next right. A young woman immediately opened the door of a rambling Victorian house just beyond the town boundary. Daniel was astonished. It wasn’t that he didn’t recognise his daughter as that it took him a split second to understand how she had changed. There was singing in the background, something eager with guitars. A tubby figure appeared carrying a tray. Sarah had had all her hair cut off.
That’s the Community, she said, sitting beside him. So it was separate from the Chapel. He reversed. They have plenty of spare beds and I didn’t want to bother you to come and get me. It had been cut roughly, even savagely. Most of them are battered wives, she explained, or homeless. Girls who’ve left home. There are no men. When he still didn’t reply, she objected: Mum’s obsessed by these exams. It’s crazy. She looked for a station on the radio, found something, listened, then turned it off dissatisfied. As if I had to be beddy-byes by nine every evening.
His daughter sounded belligerent. Daniel was acutely aware of being involved in some important parental test. You cut your hair, he finally said. Now they were back on the ring road again: the long line of yellow lights, the shadowy girls haunting their edges. Both father and daughter knew they were there. Why? Daniel asked. That’s my business, she said. He was hesitant: There’s no law against it, he agreed. M’lud should know, she said. They don’t call me, M’lud. Your honour, then, she smiled. His daughter put an arm round the back of his neck and pushed her fingers into her father’s hair. Thanks for coming, your honour, she said. I bet I woke you up. Her fingertips were tender. On the other hand – Daniel tried to make it a joke – if I suddenly came home in a frilly yellow skirt and suspender belt, which would be my business, you’d probably ask me why all the same, wouldn’t you? She removed her arm. Should he tell her, he wondered, that she looked awful? It had just been scissored away. I mean, when you live with people, he went on, you owe them a little more than the strict letter of the law, don’t you? But his daughter had burst out into a giggly laughter. Actually, it’d be pretty self-evident why, Dad, she laughed. Come to think of it, though, you might look nice in a frilly skirt. It would suit your bum.
When they had parked, he kept her in the car a moment. He said: It just occurred to me perhaps you should get it properly cropped, I mean, if you’re going to have it short. Properly? You know what I mean, he said. She sat looking out of the windscreen. It’s a Community thing, she explained, her eyes averted. To show that we’re not sex objects. Like a Moslem veil really. A Moslem veil serves to cover what everybody agrees is a sex object, he said. We’re all sex objects, he insisted. If we’re halfway lucky. Her voice hardened to a brittleness he knew all too well. Speak for yourself, she said.
Neither made a move to get out. To anyone passing by it would have seemed that they were lovers who found it difficult to part. He tried: What if one of the universities wants to interview you? Yes, so? Well, it might be advisable to look . . . What? Suddenly she was extremely aggressive. To look what, Dad? Come on! She was scathing. Advise, Dad! Tell me what would be advisable. Daniel was furious: I’m just trying to think of your own bloody good. How are they going to react when you come in looking like . . . What? she demanded. What? Tell me what I look like? I’m thinking of you, he repeated more calmly. You know that. You know it’s a provocative statement to have your hair like that. I’m thinking of you.
There was another silence. The girl bowed her head. She was sitting with the same hunched posture he had noticed a lot lately. The shoulders were drawn forward. Maybe I won’t go to university, she said. I beg your pardon? I don’t think I’m going to university, Dad. But for Christ’s sake! The Lord doesn’t want me to, she said. Then when he started to protest, she wept and turned to hug him. They were cheek to cheek. He held her tight. He wanted her to acknowledge his love. After
some moments, her body relaxed. God knows what your mother will say when she sees that hair, he muttered. Don’t cry now. Please don’t cry. Oh Mum’s already seen it, his daughter was suddenly laughing. She cheered up. She drew back. Daniel found this difficult to believe. Hilary hadn’t mentioned it. How could Hilary have seen her hair like that and not mentioned it? When finally he climbed into bed, he said, That girl’s driving me crazy; when you see what’s she’s done to her hair you’ll have a fit. There was no reply. Unable to sleep, Daniel again tried to decide how long a sentence he must give the man who had broken his son’s wrist. What did Minnie want from him? At last there was a soft laugh: It’s just a phase, Hilary murmured. She’ll soon change when she finds a boyfriend.
THREE
WHAT MARTIN READ, Daniel read. In the past. Aristotle, Montesquieu, Nietzsche, Sartre. Years ago now. When I choose a course of action for myself, I choose it for the whole human race. That had left its mark. At the weekend, though, and here Daniel could not follow, Martin had shown them his moth trap, a neon tube in a big muslin bag at the bottom of the lawn. This on a visit to discuss the surveyor’s report. The puffy fabric, mid-morning when they saw it, was a fluttering scum of drowsy brown life. He takes photographs, then lets them go, Christine explained. Martin picked out a soft brown body. His pretty wife had put on weight. And in a phone-call on the following Monday she begged, please! Please help, Dan! The two had kissed once. After some party. Nothing had come of it. Now Daniel was playing his old friend, his old mentor, at snooker again, and the excuse he had given was that there was something he needed advice about. Why do I always feel more comfortable with Martin, Daniel wondered, when assuming a position of deference, when pretending to seek advice rather than giving it?