The Radiant Way

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Prisons,’ said Alix, perched on a chair, opening a high cupboard over the sink.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Otto. ‘Prisons. Law Courts, police forces. Sewerage. The Post Office. The primary schools. The Army. The Monarchy. Why not?’

  ‘Help,’ said Alix. ‘Help.’ A pile of unleashed saucepans, whisks, cake tins, plastic freezer boxes balanced precariously against her upraised arm: a soup ladle crashed to the floor. She tried to push the pile back in again, wobbled, clutched with her other hand at the cupboard door. ‘Help,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t move, I’m stuck.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Otto: he climbed carefully up on the chair beside her, pushed at the pile, shut the door on it, jumped down, took her hands, jumped her down to him.

  They stood, facing one another. He held on to her hands.

  ‘Alix,’ said Otto, ‘a Happy New Year to you. A Happy 1984.’

  He kissed her on the mouth.

  Did he know what he was doing? She stood there. He kissed her again, less ambiguously, and then released her. She turned away, wiped her hands on Caroline’s apron.

  They said nothing. She cut another lemon in half, a lemon not needed, and squeezed it. He wiped another glass, a glass already wiped. It was nothing, said Alix to herself. There was nothing to be said.

  But she knew it was too late to undo it. It was done for all time, done if he never touched her again, if he never looked her in the eyes again. He had been caught off guard, in his own kitchen. She had been caught off guard, off balance, perched on a wooden chair. Had he known what he now knew? Would he ever know what he now knew? They were two serious people, seriously married. Her lips burned, where he had touched them. Ridiculous, thought Alix: a grey-haired, middle-aged woman in an apron. But she knew she was not ridiculous, it was not ridiculous: extraordinarily handsome she knew herself to be, as she stood there in Caroline’s blue striped butcher’s apron.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what they sang. “The da-ay Thou ga-avest, Lord, is ended, The darkness falls at Thy behest”.’ She sang, mockingly, sadly. ‘When I die,’ she said, brightening slightly, purposefully, ‘you know what I want you all to sing? Remember this, Otto. I’d like you all to sing Arthur Hugh Clough’s “Say not the struggle naught availeth”. It’s Hymn Number 637 in Songs of Praise. Will you remember, Otto?’

  ‘How,’ said Otto, looking away, folding in half his Map-of-the-Underground tea towel, ‘how could I ever, ever forget?’

  Esther Breuer stayed on in Bologna. On Twelfth Night, she and Elena dined with Claudio’s wife’s sister. They returned to Elena’s apartment at eleven, in time to take down the little silver tree. At its foot stood Esther’s Christmas gift to Elena: a little dull-silver-grey sequinned toad, with diamond eyes. Ceremoniously, Elena folded up the branches of the little false tree. Then ceremoniously, she turned to Esther, and kissed her on the forehead. Quietly, that night, they lay side by side, in their white nightdresses, like effigies, in the wide, white-coverleted double bed. Quietly, they fell asleep. Time was on their side.

  Twelfth Night. Otto Werner, waiting for the late arrival of Alix Bowen, wondering where she was, where she had got to, looking at the faces of friends as though they were the faces of strangers, forgetting names, mumbling apologies, knew that he had been in love with Alix Bowen for years – two years, three years? – and that it was a disaster. It was a wonderful disaster. Why had it happened? What was it for? Where was she? She had gone home to change; would she ever return, ever, ever, ever? Had she fled for ever? Had he frightened her away for ever? She had driven off into the night, in the little blue Renault. ‘Imagine, Otto,’ she had said on parting, with what might be a new, an everlasting gallantry, ‘imagine, there was a bird’s nest in the car’s exhaust! Wherever did anyone find a bird’s nest, in Wandsworth?’

  ‘Come back soon, Alix,’ he had said, already dry with fever at losing her, sick with apprehension that she would not return. And she had wound down the car window to wave goodbye, and then had vanished. It was half past ten. Hello, said Otto vaguely to an ex-student, have a drink, he urged a colleague. Who were all these people, who had invited them? He listened for the doorbell, he listened for the sound of her voice.

  Liz Headleand, in a corner of the large square Putney drawing-room, was talking to Caroline Werner about old age. They spoke of their mothers, of hospitals, infirmities. ‘I suppose,’ said Caroline, ‘that we must study to be good old people. Good patients. Patient patients. So that our children will not resent us for surviving.’

  Caroline’s children were still young: middle-sized children, half-way children, they politely and warily circled the adults, offering snacks, listening in on conversations. The youngest offered his mother a peeled carrot and some dip: she nibbled (too much lemon, perhaps?) (then: remembering she had not made it herself: no, no, delicious) and asked Liz a medical question, about hips. The child moved on, to a group by the piano where Pett Petrie was explaining to a young economist the mysteries of literary success: he had just published a collection of essays and reviews called Scraping the Barrel – rubbish, Pett was boasting, cheerfully, utter rubbish, pieces on moles and blue tits, from ecological mags, a review of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1968 in Taunton, opinion pieces about Public Lending Right from the 1970s – and they printed them, would you believe it, they printed them, in hardback? Are they selling, inquired the economist. I don’t suppose so, said Pett, but who cares? I got the advance.

  ‘Have a bit of celery,’ said the solemn child, to Alan Headleand, who was talking about his brother Jonathan’s film about private schooling to a glamorous young, silver-sequinned, black-stockinged lawyer who said she worked for the GLC. ‘Thanks, chum,’ said Alan, and munched. The young woman said she was the niece by marriage of Alan’s cousin Julia Rothenstein, who had appeared, sitting her university entrance examinations, in The Radiant Way. ‘Good Lord,’ said Alan, ‘then we must be sort of cousins ourselves, is that right? I saw some of The Radiant Way again over Christmas. What is Julia up to now?’

  The child moved on, to politicians and civil servants, to television presenters and lawyers. Liz, speaking of artificial hips, followed his wandering trajectory, vaguely, remembering, as she spoke, the parties she had given, feeling herself a little old, perhaps (the attendant child so young, Caroline nearly ten years younger than herself): wondering if she would ever give another party, a big party, in her house in St John’s Wood? She thought of Esther, still in Bologna: of Stephen Cox, newly returned (for he had telephoned to say so) from Istanbul. Caroline – practical, well-organized, mild-mannered, decisive Caroline – was now in the centre: matron, hostess: a fine cleavage, full firm breasts rising from her tight soft olive-green wool dress: round her the room revolved, and Liz was on the circumference, on the edge? Why did this not alarm her? Why did it merely intrigue her? Am I mad? wondered Liz, as she observed her attention being redirected, fluently, calmly, towards an approaching military historian; as she exchanged preliminary murmurs, profferred notions, and continued, effortlessly, to converse.

  ‘Look round this room,’ the young woman in sequins was saying to Alan Headleand in whom she had found a soul mate. ‘Look round this room and see if you can point to a single person in it who is engaged in primary or secondary production?’ Her question was not wholly rhetorical: together they looked. ‘Bizarre, isn’t it?’ said Alan, as their eyes roved. ‘These are the experts,’ said the young lawyer from the GLC. ‘And we are of them,’ said Alan Headleand, for this was what they had been discussing: the anomaly of their own loyalties, their own lives. ‘Tertiary. All. A tertiary, terminal bunch.’ ‘Yes,’ said the young woman. Her gaze rested on Pett Petrie. ‘Now writing books,’ she said, ‘is that tertiary production? Or merely unproductive production, would you say?’

  ‘Stephen Cox,’ said Liz to the military historian ‘says he’s writing a play about Pol Pot.’

  ‘A lot of slack in the economy,’ said the young economist to Pett Petrie.

  �
��Slack in the economy,’ echoed Pett Petrie, a little drunkenly, ‘that’s a good title.’

  An expert in criminology was speaking to Otto Werner of the increase in vandalism, the psychology of vandals, the (as it were) criminal responsibility of Utopian sixties architects and politicians, high rise, the Harrow Road estate, the status of sociology as a discipline. Otto was not listening, but the military historian’s wife was: what did they make, she wanted to know, moving abroad away from home discomforts, of the recent art outrage in Ferrara? Somebody, it appeared, had covered the Jacopo della Quercia Madonna in gold paint.

  Otto’s heart was heavy. She would not come. Where was Brian, where was Alix? Had Caroline noticed they were not there? What had happened, what more in the way of death, illness, accident, disaster? Suddenly, listening with only half an ear, to the story of the gilded Madonna, Otto was convinced that Alix had been murdered by that mad woman from Garfield, what was her name, Fox, Jilly Fox: and that it was all his fault. Blood would be flowing, innocent Brian would be knee-deep trying to staunch the guilty pumping dreadful deep blood. He had found her and lost her. He, Otto, had himself killed her.

  Abruptly, Otto left his guests in mid-sentence, and walked rapidly across the room to Caroline: Caroline must ring Alix, he had decided, must ring and enquire: but there was no need, for the door opened, and there she was.

  Ah, there is Alix, thought Liz, bored by her military historian’s description of the inaccuracies of a recent film on the atrocities in Kampuchea: there is Alix, looking extraordinarily radiant: what is it? A new dress?

  Alix came into the room, sparkling, striding, turning heads, her own head held high. Waves crackled from her, sparks flew. Ah, thought Liz, that’s what it is: a pin in her hair, a diamond pin. A fierce and fiery crown, emitting points of light.

  ‘Alix,’ cried Caroline, crossing, embracing, ‘Alix, you angel, so much shopping, so much work, without you what would we have done. . . .’

  ‘Hello,’ said Alix, stooping to kiss the solemn child. Across the room, Otto watched, dazzled. Alix glittered. She took a drink, ate an olive, inclined her tall head gravely to speak of Caroline’s mother, to apologize for their lateness – Brian had been kept on the phone, his cousin from Northam, some matter of a death certificate wrongly dated – ‘But here we are,’ said Alix, ‘yes, here we are, at last. Alive and well.’ The meaningless, superfluous words shone like jewels, shedding incandescent sparks. And there was Brian, grey, curly haired, affable, tired, smiling: yes, he agreed with Caroline, thank God it was all over: waving at Liz, a newly friendly Liz, who felt an intimacy with Brian, now that she had seen his father’s armchair, and his father’s little silver circular saw.

  Otto waited. For half an hour he waited, as Alix circled, as Alix laughed and shone. He had not detected the diamonds in her hair – which were not diamonds, as she was explaining to Liz, when finally he approached her, but paste, of course paste, a piece handed down from her godmother namesake Alix who had died a year ago: ‘But marvellous quality,’ Liz was saying, as Alix said that she had never dared to wear them before but had thought, this night, this Twelfth Night, why not? Why not indeed, said Otto, kissing her hand: she turned to him, as he still held her hand, and looked at him with wide eyes. Yes, Alix thought: yes, it is as I thought. And Liz, observing a strange tremor in Alix’s elation, excused herself, and moved tactfully, murmuring, away.

  ‘Alix,’ said Otto. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘You took so long to come back, I thought you would never come.’

  She gestured helplessly, with her free hand. ‘The telephone. . . .’ she offered, apologetic.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he repeated. ‘That woman, that woman who rang you just before Christmas, it was all my fault, you must take care, you must watch out for her – ’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Otto,’ said Alix, ‘she’s harmless, at least she is harmless to me, that isn’t part of the plot at all, I assure you.’

  ‘Then what is?’ asked Otto, intently. He still held her hand.

  ‘How will we know, until it has happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Alix. Dear Alix.’

  He gazed at her, as though looking at her for the first time, his old friend of fifteen years, and wife of an even older friendship.

  Her nose prickled. The hair on the back of her head stood up, a shimmer of tears stood in her eyes, as she returned his gaze.

  Slowly she withdrew her hand, stroked his sleeve; smiled; withdrew.

  ‘I will take care,’ she said. ‘And so must you.’

  She backed away, and was gone.

  Alix, driving towards Jilly Fox and the Harrow Road, three days later, remembered Otto and his warnings. Indeed, she never forgot him, though she had not thought much of them. What had done it? A touch, a kiss, a look? Or should she blame the decline in her support for the Labour Party, her disapproval of Brian’s dalliance with Militants, and her confused reaction to Otto’s marriage to the SDP? Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse, she said to herself, aloud: always one of her favourite quotations. Paolo and Francesca, seduced by a book, seduced by reading of the adulterous passion of Lancelot and Guinevere. La bocca mi baciò. A pander was that book and he who wrote it. Galeotto fu il SDP e chi lo. . . .? e chi lo what? a fondato? She wasn’t good enough at Italian to make up the line: though she had studied Canto V of the Inferno at Cambridge, in Italian, as an optional text, and had been much moved then, all those years ago, by the plight of Paolo and Francesca, as moved as Dante had been by those weary spirits, perpetually adrift. Ludicrous, really: at her age. But yet not quite ludicrous. A dry fever, a burning. What was to be done? Nothing. Nothing. Was she still innocent? No, she had sinned in thought, if not in word or deed. Sinned? What a concept was that, in 1984, for the daughter of ardent atheists?

  Alix, sitting patiently at Lords Roundabout in slow traffic, blamed the English Tripos at the University of Cambridge for the restless ecstasy and puzzled disquiet of her present state of mind, and wondered what Dr Leavis would have had to say to that. Not what he had intended surely?

  She had taken the afternoon off work. Polly Piper had encouraged her. Polly Piper had no doubt but that Alix ought to try to help Jilly Fox. Polly Piper was a subversive. Moreover she had just that morning revealed to Alix that she had given in her notice, had resigned, was about to quit. She had been offered a new job, a highly paid executive post with a firm manufacturing ladies’ underwear and home furnishings: it was branching out into romantic fiction publishing. I don’t know what will happen to you, she had said to Alix, with a mixture of aggression and apology. You can apply for my job, but what’s the point? Nobody ever takes up any of our recommendations. Nobody listens, ever. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Alix, she had said. At your age, with your talents, with your experience, you ought to be the Governor of Holloway or the Mistress of Girton. But as you’re not, why don’t you apply for that post advertised by the Howard League for Penal Reform? It’s not very well paid, but it’s not a bad job. I’d write you an excellent reference.

  Thanks a lot, Alix had said, with not very much irony. She had herself thought of applying for the job: but what would she do if she got it, and Brian had to move to Gloseley?

  The traffic flowed through Maida Vale. Amor che al cor gentil ratto s’apprende. . . . The canal brimmed full, as though with dark mid-winter tears, glinting in the early afternoon darkness. Tea time, a safe time, Jilly had said. After Jilly, Alix had a rendezvous with Esther. She had taken the precaution of giving Esther Jilly’s assignation address in Lykewake Gardens: had said she would be round by six. Thus, if she never reappeared, she guessed Esther might at least inform Brian? Esther was just back from Bologna: they could speak of Dante and Crivelli, of Elena and the Etruscans. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona. Love, which exempts no loved one from returning love. . . .

  What had Jilly written? ‘The winter solstice is now, and for ever, and never.’ Very nicely put
. And what had she meant about tea time being a safe time? What on earth was the rest of the daytime and night-time like at Lykewake Gardens, off the Harrow Road? A ghastly address, but probably not widely known to be ghastly. The first stretch of the Harrow Road is an underpass. Lying to one side of it, dead, Alix saw an animal that looked, in the headlights, a little like a fox. A dog or a cat, probably, but it looked like a fox. An orange fox, under the hard belly of the soaring Westway.

  Lykewake Gardens is a turning off Mortuary Road. Somebody’s idea of a joke, Alix supposed, as she parked the car. Beyond rose the blocks and walkways of the Mozart estate, but Lykewake Gardens was an ordinary, shabby, late nineteenth-century little terrace, with two-storey artisan houses. Some were boarded up, as though demolition were planned. Number 43, Jilly had appointed as their meeting place. Alix parked down the street, out of sight, round the corner, and approached on foot. 43 Lykewake Gardens bore an unwelcoming aspect. Ill-fitting curtains were drawn across the small bay front-room windows, and one of the panels of the front door had lost its glass, and was nailed up with a sheet of perforated zinc and some cardboard. Was there a light on indoors? It was hard to be sure. There was a slow, dull, blood-beat of music throbbing, but it might be coming from Number 41? Alix summoned her courage, and knocked on the door.

  Nobody answered. She knocked again, louder. A curtain twitched at the window of the neighbouring house: a face looked out. Alix knocked for a third time, and thought she heard sounds within: shuffling, knocking, a clatter of metal like a falling bicycle. Alix tried the door knob, but it would not turn. The shuffling approached, the latch was cautiously lifted, the door opened a crack.

  ‘I’ve come to see Jilly,’ said Alix. ‘Is that you, Jilly?’ The door opened.

  There stood Jilly Fox, in a tatty stained grey towelling dressing-gown, holding a candle in a brass candlestick. Her face was white, her eyes stared, her hair hung dishevelled, her feet were stubby and shapeless in layers of socks.