The seventies had been less euphoric: infidelities, small betrayals, small conflicts. But beneath that, Liz had assumed, an abiding loyalty, an abiding unity: above and beneath all, an abiding sense of the profound importance of their mutual self-knowledge and exploration, a sense that no other person in life could ever know such things of the other, that no other relationship could truly supersede or overshadow what they had been to one another. Had she now to learn to disbelieve the meaning, the very existence, of their mutual past? This she still could not quite credit: this was, she suspected, her stumbling block. She could not believe that Charles had replaced her in his imagination, his sexual imagination, with Henrietta, and replaced her so seriously that he wished to marry Henrietta. How could he? She could not bring herself to believe it, and her lack of belief proved her either mad or foolish. For it was so. So this was what her patients had been suffering when they had spoken of sexual jealousy. Not the mild irritation or passing rage that had taken hold of her when Charles had had that ridiculous association with Nicola Stowell, or of Charles when she had started to sleep with Jules, but this, the real thing, the thing itself: a negation, a denial, an undoing of past self, of past knowledge, of past joys, of past certainties, a complete and utter unmaking of the fabric of one’s true self.
Well, no, thought Liz, scraping clean the cottage-cheese carton with a teaspoon and lighting a cigarette: not quite so, not quite as bad as that. The self still goes on, eating its lunch, seeing its patients, looking forward to having dinner with Alix and Brian. It is only the sexual self that has been undone, and the sexual self is only a part of the whole. Or is it? Is it? Well, that is the question, admits Liz to herself. It is to this question, I suppose, that I must now re-address myself, she tells herself.
Charles had always enjoyed hurting people, and Liz had enjoyed being hurt. Within limits agreed between them. A bruise, a bite, a threat now and then. But Charles had never in the old days overstepped the mark: Liz herself had set the marks. By a cry, a moan, a gesture, a murmur, a hint. Was it part of the same instinct in him that had now caused him to cause her this real pain? And if so could she forgive it? Or was he even now engaged in some serious and elaborate pain-pleasure contract with Henrietta, and so deeply engaged that he had forgotten Liz’s identity, forgotten her claims on him? She could not tell.
Charles had always enjoyed dismissing people. It had been one of the features of his rise to power in the 1970s. When others quailed, Headleand would step in: with relish he would challenge the old, the weak, the woolly. He had cleared the stables not of filth and corruption but of nice woolly ageing men in their fifties, polite, gentlemanly, incompetent men. He had done it in the name of progress once, in the name of productivity now, but his own impulse had remained the same: the prospect of confrontation or a dismissal, be it of a fellow-director or of a hundred or two employees had stiffened his sinews and made his spirits rise. And now he had given his own middle-aged wife the sack (an appalling but apparently current phrase, which Liz had heard, though mercifully not applied to herself, from one of her younger patients). The possibility occurred to her, for the first time, that he had actually enjoyed it, that the dreadful scene of New Year’s Eve had been stage-managed by him as a rejuvenating rite, as a fifty-year-old’s assertion of potency, of renewal.
The possibility did not appeal to her. It was so unpleasant that she wondered that she had not thought of it before.
Not that she thought before of any possible connection between Charles’s recent behaviour and that of her father, though she had long recognized that Charles had replaced the fantastic, punishing father of her childhood. But in real life, what, after all, had her real father done? What had he done to her mother? Had he died on her, or dismissed her before dying on her? Had he perhaps gone off with another woman? Was that the explanation of her mother’s withdrawal from the world? She fingered her locket in which, it was alleged, the image of her father was imprisoned. But was it even him? Neither she nor Shirley (who carried an identical image in an identical locket) knew whether it was their father or not, who gazed at them solemn, unsmiling, clean-shaven, heavy browed, undistinguished, indistinguishable, from his small oval frame. No other images of him had adorned the house in Abercorn Avenue, an absence that had led the irreverent Shirley to declare defiantly late one night in the kitchen that she didn’t believe that the photo in the locket was him at all, it was just any old photo, and that she and Liz had never had a father at all but had been born of a virgin birth. Liz had been shocked but amused by this suggestion, and had tried hard to recall the real shadow of a real father from her infant years – could she or could she not remember sitting on a man’s knee, the smell of tobacco, the sound of a man’s voice? She was not sure. She could not be sure.
And yet she, Doctor Elizabeth Headleand, was considered an expert in these matters. She wrote papers on fostering and adoption, on the psychiatric problems of the adopted, the orphaned, the stepmothered: she had appeared as an expert witness in court, had given respected evidence to the committee which had recommended the changes in law that made possible the disclosure of the identity of parents of adopted children. Physician, heal thyself. Physician, know thyself.
It will by now be evident that Liz Headleand is concealing something from herself, and that it is for this reason that she sits there perplexed before an empty cottage-cheese carton, smoking a cigarette. It is evident to Liz Headleand herself, as well as to the reader, that she is concealing something from herself. But what is it? Does she know what it is? Do you know what it is? Do I know what it is? Does anybody know what it is?
Liz Headleand asked herself what it was that she knew but did not know, and, naturally, received no answer from herself. She straightened her back, stubbed out her cigarette, looked at her watch. Where to go from here? Where but onwards? Almost cheerfully, she assented to her own stubborn proposition, her own long-held proposition, that effort will be rewarded. So it had been before: so it might be again. A continuing contemplation of the unpleasant will generate enlightenment, information, knowledge: and knowledge will restore health and life. So it had been, so it would be. She would continue. She would turn back in order to leap forwards. She would dig up again her father’s corpse, she would explore once more those dark labyrinthine strong-smelling chambers and passages. She would hold the string tightly as she made her way to meet the beast. She smiled at her own imagery. She had always preferred the dreadful to the dull. Or so she thought. But even as she sat there smiling with a straight back, she doubted her own courage. In her heart, she doubts herself. She wonders if she dares to dig. She is afraid.
Esther Breuer for her lunch ate some old beetroots that tasted slightly off, slightly wet, slightly musty and dank; garnished with some hard crumbs of violent Roquefort and a cold boiled potato. She covered all these with olive oil from Lucca, very good quality olive oil delivered by hand by a musical friend who was living in Tuscany and writing a book on Guido d’Arezzo. As she ate, she contemplated some colour photographs of details from Crivelli’s Virgin and Child and his Vision of the Blessed Gabriel which she had newly acquired for a lecture on Crivelli which she was to deliver in Birmingham the following month. She could by now have delivered a lecture on Crivelli standing on her head with her eyes shut and her back to the screen, she sometimes claimed, but she liked to vary her address, for her own amusement. She had in the past devoted a great deal of attention to the amazing arrays of greengrocery – pears, apples, peaches, marrows – with which Crivelli liked to adorn his subjects, and thought that this time she would dwell more on the phallic and the uterine as represented by the gaily coloured little arrows that so happily and decoratively perforated the sultry, smiling, androgynous Saint Sebastian on the Virgin’s left, and by the Virgin’s appearance to Gabriel from a vaginal slit in the sky, wittily echoed by the Saint’s own red rocky womblike bolt hole. They would like that in Birmingham. Esther Breuer was in a good mood. She had received a letter that morning inviting
her to Bologna to deliver her opinion on the authenticity of a painting possibly by Carlo Crivelli himself, possibly by his brother Vittore, newly acquired from a monastery on the Yugoslav–Albanian border. She liked the idea of a trip to Bologna. She wanted to revisit the Carracci frieze in the Palazzo Salem. Romulus and Remus brought up by the she-wolf. A good excuse to do various things at once, with her fare paid.
She mopped up the oil with a crust of bread. The new Crivelli was described as a Baptism, probably part of a polyptych, the figure of John much damaged, but the waters of the Jordan pleasantly stocked with a charming array of fishes and lilies, and in the bottom right-hand corner, a nest of mallard ducklings. She longed to see the little ducks. She would go in March or April, for a week.
Shirley Harper for her lunch ate a cold sausage, a piece of toast, a lump of New Zealand cheddar, a spoonful of Branston pickle, and a large slice of lemon cake with lemon butter-cream filling. She had not meant to eat the lemon cake, but justified herself by saying that it would be a pity to let it go stale. It was rather a good cake. Shirley still baked, occasionally, although nobody seemed much interested in her offerings, apart from Cliff, and he was putting on weight and ought not to accept them. She had taught herself to bake, from books. One of the most vivid, powerful and romantic memories of her early childhood was of watching the mother of a school friend baking. She had called in, on her way home, knowing she would be in trouble for lingering, but unable to resist, and there had been June’s mother in an apron and a white wooden kitchen table covered in bowls and wire trays and jugs of water and pastry cutters and jams and packets of raisins and sultanas. June’s mother wielded the rolling pin with floury hands and little bits of crinkly pastry fell off the edge of the board. June picked one up and ate one, offered one to Shirley. Shirley looked at June’s mother in terror and apprehension, but June’s mother smiled and said, ‘Go on, try a bit, not too much or it’ll give you indigestion,’ and she had nibbled at the soft, doughy, salty, raw paste. They scraped out the cake bowl with a wooden spoon, raw cake mixture, yellow, smooth, liquid. They nibbled at a glacé cherry. The wickedness, the security. A smell of cooking and warmth filled the kitchen from the old-fashioned kitchen range. Jam tarts, rock buns, a lemon cake, coconut fingers, cheese scones. Those were the days when a housewife would bake for a week. Rationing days, still: substitute ingredients, poor substitutes, to June’s mother; dried egg, turnip-extended jam, margarine; but to Shirley and June, God’s plenty.
Shirley was late home, and chastised, made to stand in a corner, brooding on illicit dough. Later that night she whispered to Liz, in bed, ‘Why can’t we have cakes?’ Liz had snapped, ‘Don’t be silly.’ ‘But why?’ Shirley persisted. Liz pondered, defeated. ‘Because of the War,’ she said, finally. An answer, and no answer.
Rita Ablewhite did not bake partly because she could not endure the sensation of flour on her fingers, in her nails. The soft wet putty in her hands. She had tried to keep herself at one remove from food. She fed her girls on dry goods, raw goods, straight-from-the-tin goods. Amazing, thought Shirley sometimes, looking back, that we didn’t get rickets, scurvy, vitamin deficiencies.
Rita Ablewhite had lived for years on diet mixes and biscuits, on raw packets of jelly and soup cubes. Growing skeletal, stooping, shrivelled. In her old age, Shirley had rebelled on her behalf, had braved her mother’s wrath, had called in the doctor. Her mother had not seen a doctor in twenty years. The doctor had been appalled, but helpless. She was not certifiable, what could one do? There is no law against living on the edge of sanity, against eating jelly cubes, against wearing the same clothes for thirty years, against letting one’s teeth rot. He had recommended Meals On Wheels. To Shirley’s astonishment, her mother had accepted the suggestion. To her greater astonishment, she had begun to enjoy her food, had become quite choosy. She would complain that it had been mince two days running, that the chicken was tepid, that the carrots were over-cooked. She would tell Shirley she fancied a bit of fish for her supper. Shirley began to provide evening meals, not always, but sometimes. Her mother sometimes said thank you, even.
In fact, said Shirley to herself, as she firmly put the cake back in the cake tin, the point was that their mother wasn’t half as barmy as she made out, had never been half as barmy as her daughters had come to believe her to be. Eccentric, yes, odd, certainly, but not demented, not dangerous, not quite. If there had been anyone around to take charge, to intervene, to advise? But there had been nobody. Only Miss Mynors, twittering, midget, deformed, inexplicable Miss Mynors. Miss Mynors, dressmaker, who would come in every day for tea and nibble a biscuit. Not much of a refuge, Miss Mynors.
No, Rita Ablewhite had not been barmy. She had kept her daughters alive, she had fended off enquiries with considerable shrewdness, she had driven away intruders, and preserved her citadel. She had abided by the laws of the land, had sent her children off to school regularly, had attended to their vaccinations and immunizations, had nursed them through sicknesses, had fed them regulation cod liver oil and thick, sticky, strong government orange juice, had clothed them and taken them to have their hair cut. True, as soon as they could safely make excursions on their own – and possibly slightly earlier – they had been obliged to do so, for Rita did not like going out. But she had not been totally out of touch, she had known which was the correct school, had fed Liz’s ambitions, had even made one or two surprising ventures into the annexation of the outside world. She had, for instance, paid for both girls to have elocution lessons. At the time, this had seemed odd, but not nearly as odd as it seemed in retrospect. True, the elocution teacher had been a friend of Miss Mynors, but she had been a perfectly regular teacher, not a freak. A large, broad-faced, double-chinned, plain, soft-spoken, plummy-voiced surburban woman in a tweed suit, who wore a shiny shirt and a tie with a fox’s head pin. Rita Ablewhite had announced that she did not want her daughters to sound like common Yorkshire schoolgirls. (Which is what, of course, they were, what Shirley herself most wanted to be, and the commoner the better.) They had to learn to speak correctly, to speak like the voices on the wireless to which Rita so tirelessly attended. Rita’s own voice was identifiably Yorkshire.
Shirley and Liz had quite enjoyed the lessons, in their different ways. Shirley enjoyed the outing, simply as an outing: a different sitting room, different flowers on the carpet, different cushions on the settee, a different glass shade on the central lamp, a china horse on the mantelpiece, an embroidered fire-screen with a lyre bird, a vase of Chinese lanterns. She had enjoyed examining Miss Featherstone’s skull. Miss Featherstone had a skull called Horace, with unlocking sinus chambers fastened by little golden hooks. Shirley used to try to make her get it out every week, but she wouldn’t. It was a rationed treat. Everything was rationed in those days. Shirley also enjoyed the tweedy, lavender smell of Miss Featherstone.
Liz liked the poetry. She liked to hear Miss Featherstone intoning poetry. ‘The splendour falls on castle walls’, ‘Goblin Market’, Don John of Austria, Edith Sitwell, A. E. Housman, even, daringly, a little Dylan Thomas. Liz learned to intone it herself, and would drone for hours to herself in bed, under the bedclothes. Oh, shut up, Shirley would shout, as she tried to concentrate on her Enid Blyton or her Richmal Crompton, or her smuggled copies of The Girls’ Crystal, but Liz would go on and on for hours, incantatory, entranced, drugged, like a spirit voice.
Rita Ablewhite approved of reading. She read books herself. Dickens, Trollope, Charlotte Bronté, that sort of thing. The same books, again and again, although when the girls were old enough to go to Boots Library she would send them out on her behalf for new fodder. How had she acquired this habit? Like so much about her, it remained a mystery.
The Radiant Way Page 18