‘But I am ready.’
‘No, you’re not. You don’t want to go. You’re not ready to go away with a woman. That’s it, isn’t it?’
She did not know why she was offering this advice, apart from the fact that it was in the same spirit of glasnost that had dictated her actions for the past month. She could see what this was about. Helen, whom she did not know, and might not see again, really wished to talk about her husband, to this stranger, to anyone, maybe to elicit comparable confidences, and thus to be at home in the only way she appreciated. The holiday had been devised by a more robust personality in an effort to take her out of herself. To this friend mourning was unseemly. Miriam could almost sympathize, but in a moment of self-doubt wondered whether mourning should not be given pride of place. She had almost lost sight of her own, but was aware that it lay in wait. She had made a mistake in accepting this woman’s invitation. She would have done better to have gone straight home, to have spent a few quiet moments in Beatrice’s room, making contact again, although she was not ready to do so. The longer this could be put off the better. Yet she could still appreciate Helen’s problem.
‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. Thank you for tea.’
At the door – and she was aware that her contribution was being judged imprudent – she asked, ‘Will you go, do you think?’
‘Of course I’ll go,’ replied Helen primly. ‘I hope I’m not one to let an old friend down.’
‘Good for you,’ said Miriam, turning away. The friend, no doubt, was feeling the same way. They would congratulate themselves later on having got through the holiday, or the ordeal, might even consider doing it again. In the dark days ahead they would suppose that they had enjoyed it, only too grateful that the following summer was still a long way off.
But summer was still an eternal now, although a notice in Marks and Spencer said, ‘Take comfort in wool.’ Dark-coloured clothes were already on display, yet the assistants were pale with fatigue. It was they who deserved their holiday. Suddenly discouraged by the plastic bag bumping against her leg (for even that sensation was familiar) she took a taxi home, longing for the silence of the flat. She closed Beatrice’s windows, feeling, for the first time, an edge of loneliness. She was in for the evening, for the night, until the new sun released her again the following morning.
The next day was Sunday, which she always found difficult. Sunday was a day traditionally consecrated to ennui, a day on which it was inappropriate – Beatrice’s word – to eat a sandwich for lunch. In Miriam’s mind Sundays were situated somewhere in February, with only a bleak sky to lighten the day. And on Sundays, of course, she took a walk with Beatrice. Now, theoretically, she was free to enjoy the sort of Sunday which she used to assign to other people. She could get up late, read all the papers, spend the afternoon at a museum, if she so chose. But she was too restless to stay indoors, and the papers would contain little of interest at this quiet season of the year. Most people were still away; when she went out Sloane Street was almost silent. It was still very early, barely seven. Quite suddenly she was disheartened, not knowing what to do with her time. Time was the problem, she realized, and would continue to be so as the days grew shorter. And the winter was inevitable, even after so exceptional a summer. Je redoute l’hiver, parce que c’est la saison du confort. Rimbaud had said that, and, perhaps wisely, cut his winters short. But death, even when not entirely involuntary, was not the ideal solution.
This Sunday would be no different from any other. And in the morning Tom would be gone for three whole weeks. This, no doubt, was what accounted for her moment of discouragement, and now, perhaps, was the moment to consider the implications of this. She would miss him; in many ways she needed him to be there. She felt for him a secure, an established affection that somehow negated physical love. He was the brother she had never had. So used to her own company, or to the company of her sister, she was newly aware of the attractiveness of men. And Tom was by any standards an attractive man, large, reassuring, with nothing of the original about him. It was true that women responded to that latter characteristic, in which they saw a whole youthful history which excluded them. That, presumably, was why some women went to football matches. Tom was cordial, grown-up. He had always behaved impeccably, had not expressed ill-humour at her refusal. Sometimes she suspected that he was relieved: her comparable gift to him was never to question him, to allude to the possibility of other women in his life. He had no sisters, he had told her, and she thought, or hoped, that she fulfilled that function for him. Friendship with a man was an unfamiliar sensation. She had a sudden desire to hear his voice, but knew that she must not disturb what was probably a private interlude. In any event he had promised to telephone that evening.
She wondered briefly, for it was impossible not to, what kind of woman would appeal to him, and came up with a profile of someone pretty decided, a colleague no doubt, with the same interests and preoccupations. This would be a woman of some quality, shrewd, courageous, undeterred by discomfort or danger, with wide experience of the world’s most uncomfortable regions. Miriam saw her in a khaki shirt and trousers, with a fine unadorned face and short red hair. The same sort of background, probably, a family history that could bear the light of day. She was not jealous of this woman. How could she be? She herself had succumbed to more corrupt attractions which still aroused in her a mournful excitement. She was not good enough for Rivers, that was it. Sometimes she heard a wistful note in her voice when she was speaking to him, but only because her respect for him was so great. If she were unavailable, and had made herself so, it was because she judged herself to be unsuitable. Her earlier love affair had disqualified her, made her unsure. The distance she maintained between them was not tactical. It was the natural expression of a profound remorse.
The day would be filled, but, she suspected, with difficulty. For the first time since Beatrice’s death she felt fretful, unoccupied, yet at the same time resentful of restraints, real or imaginary. She knew that her own deeply receptive nature would be adequate to the task of measuring her loss, of allotting future time to its perusal, of reaching some conclusion about the conduct of her own life. She had obliged some law of nature and let the season govern her moods. It would have been unwise to disregard the compelling power of the sun, but it would now be wise to proceed as if the sun were unlikely to shine for ever. Already there were minute signs that autumn was on its way: a stillness in the heavy trees, as if they were longing to shed their leaves, asters and dahlias beginning to arrive on flower stalls. As she walked along the Embankment she brushed imaginary cobwebs from her face: there were more spiders about than usual. She did not have the confidence to sit down in her usual place, now empty of its familiars. Tomorrow, for a little while longer, she would recapture the spirit of what she now saw as a blessed hiatus, almost like the interval between sleeping and waking. Now she did not question the impression that that interval had expired.
The walk was perhaps a mistake. Disconcerted, she turned back towards home, busied herself with minor household tasks, half wanting to be rescued, yet too unprepared to go in search of rescue. In the afternoon she would go to the British Museum, or to the Wallace Collection – it hardly mattered which. The advantage of the Wallace Collection was that it would be empty; on the other hand it was in that problematic part of London that had been the scene of her most shameful encounters. She marvelled at the strange coincidence that had placed Simon and Tom on the same trajectory, could not quite face retracing those steps, though the Wallace Collection was innocent. It would have to be the British Museum, she thought with a sigh, but was in fact disinclined to leave the flat, and wished only to sit quietly with a book in her lap, even though she knew that the book would remain unopened.
She waited restlessly for Tom’s telephone call, and yet was startled when it came. No sound had been heard in the building all day.
‘Tom?’ she said cautiously, conscious of the fact that he might not be
alone.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes, fine. I’m seeing you tomorrow morning, aren’t I?’
‘Can you wait outside for me? I’ll be coming by cab, rather early, I’m afraid. Is seven o’clock too soon for you?’
‘Quarter to, if you’d prefer it.’
‘Yes, that might be preferable.’ He sounded businesslike; there was definitely someone there. He could be having this conversation with anyone. She felt the slightest bit uneasy at the thought.
‘That’s better,’ she heard him say in his normal voice. ‘My brother stayed the night. He’s just gone, I’m glad to say. I love him, but I need some time to myself. You’re all right, I trust. All well out there?’
‘What will you be doing in Jakarta?’
‘East Timor, actually. Keep that to yourself.’
‘Is that dangerous?’
‘Unsavoury, certainly.’
‘Will you be safe?’
‘Of course.’
In the morning, seeing him in the first beautiful light, she did not doubt that he would be safe. What troubles could befall this splendid representative of the established order, in a cream-coloured suit that hinted at England’s colonial past, his hair sternly brushed, his expression benign? He took her hand and raised it to his lips, then relinquished it and gazed interestedly out of the car window.
‘I always think this is the worst part,’ she said, as they sped down Cromwell Road. ‘This is the point at which I know I’m never coming back. That my home is only a memory. That London is irretrievable. This is worse than the flight itself. The flight is fantasy. This is the wasteland. This is reality.’
‘People live here too, you know. All the way to the airport. Cleaners, mechanics, useful people.’
‘I know I’m not useful, Tom.’
‘Oh, don’t start.’ But he looked at her quizzically, indulgently, took her hand again. ‘What will you do while I’m away?’
‘I’ll get down to some work, I think, although there’s nothing urgent. Will it be hot out there?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It will be autumn when you get back.’
‘Oh, hardly. Still time for a holiday. I’ve been invited to join some friends in Sardinia, as a matter of fact.’
She felt briefly alarmed, as though she were losing him. This feeling intensified as he strode into the airport building, as if he could hardly wait for her to catch up with him. Strangers eyed him with respect, not so much for his height and vigour as for his air of being in his element, of being in control of circumstances. The light-coloured suit emphasized his strong, suddenly overwhelming physical presence.
‘Do you want coffee?’ he asked, but absent-mindedly.
‘Yes, I think so. And you should eat something. You’ve a long day ahead of you.’
In the cafeteria he was clearly preoccupied, his lips pursed, his fingers playing with sachets of sugar. She felt that they had become distanced, as though the journey to Heathrow, about which she had felt so superstitious, had separated them. When they stood up to leave she saw that he looked suddenly older, as if an anxiety had surfaced.
‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes.’ Then, turning his full attention on to her, ‘Don’t wait, Miriam. These places are so horrible. Take care of yourself.’
It was what he always said. She watched him walk away from her, felt his kiss on her cheek. When he comes back, she thought, but did not know quite what she thought. On the return to London she imagined meeting him again, fulfilled merely by his renewed presence. This impression kept her company throughout the rest of the day and even into the night. But when she switched on her radio on the Tuesday morning it was to hear that his plane had come down in the sea and that there were no survivors. Sabotage had not been ruled out.
17
Winter reconnects one with one’s losses. Christmas, celebrated in the shops from October onwards, is dreaded by the bereaved, and perhaps even more by the bereft. Miriam, bereaved of Beatrice, still looked up at the window when she returned home at the end of the day, expecting to see the white oval of a face, a lifted hand, and still, when the telephone rang, wondered whether someone – the police, the Foreign Office – were trying to contact her to tell her that Tom had been recovered from the sea. She maintained a strict control of her emotions; nothing of her dismay appeared on her face. She felt an immense confusion, was almost grateful to the monotony of her daily routine for consuming her time, which was a continuous problem. Waking early, she dreaded the extra hour thus afforded her: what to do with it? She was not easy until she left the flat and joined the crowd at the bus stop. There some commonality of purpose asserted itself; she was disguised as an honest wage earner. Only she knew that no conversation, of an idle casual tenor, such as she imagined among colleagues, would enliven her day; only a muted greeting from a custodial figure would signal her arrival at her place of work. Thereafter the silence would be unbroken.
These days, though still in thrall to her original discipline, she loitered, lingered, looked into windows. If she were lucky there would be a picture in a small commercial gallery to detain her, or she might make a short detour to the French tourist office and pick up some timetables. This was satisfactory as far as it went, but she missed the random, the intimate nature of small shops on unfrequented streets, with their more humble displays, that she and Beatrice used to appreciate on their Sunday walks, in areas where shopkeepers still lived on the premises. She did not know whether what she felt for such places was homesickness or some more recent nostalgia; she only knew that all the components of loss were there. Their hard-earned sophistication, Beatrice’s and hers, the determination with which they had faced the world, were no longer of any use, were, for quite long periods, genuinely unavailable. She knew that this was how Beatrice had felt at the end of her life, when the support of her own character was beginning to falter. Miriam now sensed that she was united with her sister as never before, imagined her reactions to those tiny incidents which sometimes furnish a life more readily, more accessibly than major events, birth, marriage, even death. She no longer had any desire to question Beatrice on what she might now be qualified to discuss but rather to induct her seamlessly into humdrum everyday banality, to comment on a passing occurrence or a striking face, to link arms again, to walk slowly down uneventful streets on misty silent Sunday mornings, mornings which were the proper repository for that great abundance of time which she now had in her gift.
As for Tom Rivers, she quite simply mourned the fact that she would never see him again, that he was beyond recall, had died in so abrupt and definitive a manner that she could not admit him into her daily life, as she could her sister, was unable to imagine taking a walk with him, as they had once anticipated. Her keenest regret was that this walk, or these walks, had never taken place; with their disappearance, with the impossibility of their now ever taking place, she felt as if her own life had been interrupted, as his had been. She had no faith, was unable to console herself with visions of Beatrice and Tom in the hereafter, conversing affably: the idea was ludicrous, although she knew that they would have been compatible. She felt something more unexpected, an impression of some not quite conceivable harmony in which men and women, their differences forgotten, were at last able to meet without prejudice, without preconception, not in some problematic next world but in an ideal world, as this was meant to be. In a state of Edenic honesty, but with all their worldly experiences still to inform them, the dead would at last confess as they had never done in life, could at last bestow praise, affection, love, not for some absent Deity but for one another. She did not know whether this impression was theologically correct, rather thought not, since everybody qualified for a place. Simply she knew that the dead were composed of the same material, that there were no more differences between them, and that had these differences not been perceived earlier, in life, as it were, it was because the living were so frequently in erro
r.
This was almost a consolation, but not quite. Sometimes, in that strange passage between sleeping and waking, she would see Tom, in his light-coloured suit, or Beatrice, in her black dress. Tom would seem to be striding away from her, as he had done at the airport, and it was easy to imagine his stride continuing without loss of impetus, as if he were some mythical character whose brief comprised endless journeys, purposeful wanderings, missions undertaken in obedience to promptings, compulsions, of which she, earthbound, knew nothing. Once she had a sense of Tom, still in his suit, striding off into regions with no geographical boundaries, which her own scepticism would not allow her to identify. Whereas Beatrice was always turned towards her, smiling discreetly from behind her piano, with none of the disappointment that had clouded her gaze as life let her down. This Beatrice, she could see, was possessed of some secret knowledge she had not formerly apprehended; there had been some sort of reconciliation. So that whereas Tom’s energy could not be stilled, Beatrice was all acquiescence. Fully awake, she marvelled that these images were so exact. Eternity had made them immortal. She had no need to fear that they would vanish. Their posthumous presence was assured.
She saw that these two people, who had never met, held the keys to her own life, were her completion, her fulfilment, whereas more ephemeral characters, such as Simon Haggard, were simply made of inferior material. Once he had passed her in a car; at least she had seen a hand waving and had identified it as belonging to him. The only surprise was that she felt no curiosity about him. His physical splendour was no longer a memory; it was as if he had become a dead star, a random fragment of astronomical matter, beyond usefulness. Naked, as he always was in her memory, he had less physical presence than Tom in his pale suit, as if his nakedness had been inopportune, ill considered. Yet she had loved the one, not quite loved the other. Both partings had been unnatural, yet no one was entirely to blame. She saw now that shame and guilt were otiose; only regret was permissible. And defensible. Miriam saw that she too deserved regret for the manner in which she had been forsaken. One’s life is not always in one’s own hands. That is why it is so convenient to blame outside forces. But in fact one’s secret self makes certain choices, rejects others. This is a matter for reflection, not for self-castigation. But it is apparently easy to explain to others: ‘That was where I went wrong. That was where I made my mistake.’ It was in fact more sensible to contemplate destiny. Just as it was Tom’s destiny always to be walking away, and Beatrice’s to smile loyally, it was hers to appreciate their closeness, in death as in life, and, almost as important, to see them as persons of worth, deserving of praise. Her younger self – but she had not been so very young – had mistaken the external envelope as an indication of excellence. This, in retrospect, struck her as delayed childishness, or the sort of awestruck impressionability with which she had so often reproached Beatrice. Yet for all his splendour Simon had dematerialized, and his absence left her almost indifferent. Quite simply, other considerations now held sway.
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