by Zoe Morrison
‘I hope I’m not interrupting a thought,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, although by now I was wary.
‘You’re Alice Haywood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. I thought I just saw you here with Haywood,’ and he turned, as if to see where Edward had gone. ‘Sorry. My name is Frank Porter. My wife, Elizabeth, asked me to look out for you. She couldn’t come tonight. Bad cold. You’re new to Oxford?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Excellent,’ he said again. ‘Well, at least I’ve got that right,’ and he laughed. I smiled too. ‘Elizabeth has taken over the “welcome to college” tea. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?’
I shook my head.
‘I hadn’t either, which isn’t much good. I should have, given I’ve been here for … Anyway, it’s a get-together so women can meet one another. This year Elizabeth is hosting, and she asked me to make sure you’d received your invitation.’
I stared at him, nonplussed. It seemed this was an entirely benevolent overture. ‘I haven’t. But I’d love to come.’
‘Excellent … Now I wonder what happened to your invitation …’ and he pursed his lips. ‘Never mind. I can tell you all about it.’ He smiled again and gave me the details and their address in North Oxford. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to tell Elizabeth. She’ll be so pleased. And now that I’ve found you, I think I might sneak out. She’s quite unwell and,’ he glanced around, ‘these dinners are a bit interminable, aren’t they?’
But before he left, he stood there beside me for a while, holding his hands out towards the fire, too.
‘That feels lovely,’ he said, ‘doesn’t it?’
39.
Oxford, October 11th, 2005
Brahms, the Intermezzo in A major, was trickling in from somewhere, nowhere. I got up slowly from my place in front of the fire, went into the front room. For the first time I was able to admit that I was behaving like a person lost in a desert who has started hallucinating. A shimmering oasis, palm trees, frosted jugs of lemonade, ice blocks chinking. And it is a piece for the end of the world, that one. If you were given the choice between the world and it, you would choose the music, I am sure of it. It is a piece that is all coda, the whole of it saying, here, rest, lay down your head. And the way it was played, such beauty, such ache. I leant against the wall, my body curved into the shape of an ear, a clef. Listening, leaking.
The Brahms finished, I went over to the window. There were a few leaves left on the bottom branches of a tree in the street, piles on the ground beneath. They looked like severed hands, fingertips curled in one last tremulous embrace. A small child walked past, kicked at the piles with her little boots, making the leaves fly and circle and fall into different patterns. But I couldn’t see a parent. I got up quickly and looked down the street as far as I could, and there she was, the mother, pushing an empty pram.
Quentin Kidd came out of his house, my neighbour on the right. He waddled down his path carrying two bulging bags of rubbish. We hadn’t spoken for some years. Before he retired he was a lecturer at Edward’s college; he wrote plays as a hobby, and pantomimes, even had a few staged. Edward despised him, probably because of his rumoured homosexuality, but also because he never thought Quentin much good at what he did. I watched him squat, place the bags beside the gutter, then ease himself upright and limp back in.
I got up and found a blanket in the cupboard under the stairs, a whiff of mould to it. I held it around my shoulders, shuffled past the phone to the kitchen for a sip of warm water. Then I sat in the hall cradling the receiver in my arms.
40.
Oxford, January, 1951
One bright winter’s morning, not long after the dinner, I walked with Edward into the economics department. I was nervous, but also excited.
He showed me the anteroom outside his office, with a desk and a typewriter. He informed me of the similarity between a typewriter and a piano keyboard.
‘I’ve never used one of these before,’ I said. I hadn’t expected this. ‘I don’t know how those machines work.’
He gave me a handwritten paper, many pages.
‘Well, give it a go,’ crossly. ‘It can’t be hard.’
Perhaps he thought such a thing came naturally.
He went into his office, closed the door. I looked down at the pages of his writing, then at the first word: The. I found the letter T, pressed my finger down, nothing happened. I pressed it again, hard. Bang! The noise! H. Bang! Again. E. Bang! Edward put his head around the door, frowning.
Sorry, I mouthed.
How was I supposed to make the machine work quietly? And then I finally recognised the sound I could hear. It was women’s fingers flying over typewriter keyboards, creating a steady, even patter. They were so expert the sound they made blended into the very structure of the building and disappeared almost entirely.
I sat up straight, looked again at the paper, the keys.
When he came out later he leant over the machine, inspected the wonky paragraph I’d managed, reached over, ripped the paper from the roller, screwed it up and threw it onto the floor.
‘Hopeless,’ he hissed, ‘I can’t use that. What’s more, you ruined the morning with that bloody racket,’ and out he stalked.
I stayed there, not moving. After a while I heard footsteps, then a group of men passed by the door. The sound faded. I kept sitting there.
A while later I heard them come back. One of them put his head around the door and said, ‘Haywood in?’
‘No,’ I whispered, and I felt, suddenly, as if I might cry. He looked at me strangely and left.
And instead of thinking: this is unfair, and he is monstrous, I was starting to think, no, I am not very good at this, not at all, I must be such a disappointment. And to start to think such things, that was almost the worst part.
A lot of the wives did secretarial work for their husbands. Some were also research assistants, a few collaborators. Stella, for example, whom I met at the welcome tea, was married to Giles, an archaeologist. They had no children and she went on all the digs, even co-wrote the books (just his name on the cover, which only changed much later). Enid, married to James, had been an anthropologist herself but had given it up when they’d had a family. (‘Better one of us be excellent than both of us mediocre.’ Also, when she’d had too much sherry: ‘If only I were a book, then he might see me.’) She edited his work, gave him a lot of help. Josephine, still working as a teacher, spoke four languages and wrote poetry. Helle was German and had been a nurse; after raising five children she set up the county’s first foster-care program. These were just some of the women I met through Elizabeth.
Elizabeth herself (whom everyone except Frank called Bess) was a bit like Frank but even better. She had big glasses and a big smile, which was strange in that place. There was something about her that instantly relaxed me, and we got on very well. Her parents had been missionaries and she had trained as a religious teacher, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do; she was doing this and that, she said. No children at that point. She spoke of Frank often, and warmly.
Several of the women were involved with charitable works, and this interested me. I thought I could do something for others less fortunate, and get to know the town better. Perhaps I could also find out about the arts scene, for music and charity often go hand in hand. I could establish a performance reputation in Oxford before making it back to London.
I asked Bess about it, and she said, Oh, you need to talk to Hilary, she organises the volunteer rosters; that I should call on her and perhaps take a little posy, which seemed odd, but down I went to her place one afternoon, one of those huge houses on the Banbury Road, a little clutch of forget-me-nots tied with a ribbon in my hand.
Hilary didn’t even invite me in. She stood at the door and said, ‘You want a place on one of the charity rosters, I expect?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Well, I warn you,’ she barked, ‘it might take years.
’
‘Years?’
‘We run highly efficient services here in Oxford. There are simply not enough poor to go around.’
I nearly laughed right there on her doorstep. You didn’t have to leave the house to see poverty in Oxford; St Ebbes, a slum, was mere feet from some university buildings. But then I looked at her face, and thanked her and handed over the posy, and I was glad I hadn’t laughed, because she seemed a bit sad looking at those flowers, and puzzled, and her hands took them so greedily.
Later that week Bess heard that the college organ master had shingles.
‘Quick,’ she said, calling around, ‘go and tell his wife Hazel you play the piano. Don’t say you’re good at it, that would be fatal. Just say you happen to play.’
‘Why shouldn’t I say I’m any good?’
‘If you don’t say anything, she’ll know that you’re extremely good.’
‘What?’ (I hadn’t yet learnt those rules of the place, how things were said.)
‘No time to explain. Go, go. There’ll be other people wanting it. She lives in that crumbly terrace around the corner with the sick elm out the front, you know the one.’
I got the job filling in for the organist for the rest of January and into February. Most afternoons I’d accompany the choir, stopping and starting on the nod of the conductor. I asked about pay at the end of it, and the conductor gave me a look and said he’d ask the bursar, and the bursar told Edward.
Roaring into the kitchen, throwing up his arms. ‘You crass colonial! Knee-deep in the mud, not even trying to crawl out of it, no idea of etiquette. Shut up until you learn something. You’re an embarrassment.’ Throwing the dishcloth, shoving a chair, which tipped and fell backwards onto the floor. ‘Pick that up!’ and I was shrinking then, I was shrinking from all of them.
I could have taught the piano, but where? In that house? With him there? In any case I didn’t want to. I wanted to play the piano myself. I wanted to perform, not bow out.
41.
Oxford, October 12th, 2005
The phone rang, the noise exploding into the house like shattered glass.
‘Hello, Mother.’
I didn’t move.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Richard,’ clearing my throat, trying to breathe steadily, to breathe at all. Straight away he asked if I was getting out much and if I had seen Bess lately.
‘She’s so busy these days.’ My voice came out in a husky whisper, I cleared my throat. ‘Looking after Frank; Parkinson’s, you remember,’ staring at the carpet.
Then I asked after Martha and he told me she had left him, moved out, which upset me. They hadn’t been together long, perhaps a year or two, but she had seemed to adore him.
‘When? When did she leave?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Possibly after Christmas.’
‘Possibly? You don’t remember?’
‘I mean that it was over by then anyway so it didn’t matter, but I don’t particularly want to talk about it.’
‘But that was … months ago! You’ve been without someone all this time?’
He didn’t answer.
You need someone to love, is what I wanted to say, someone to love you, and you need to love them well – deeply, completely, equally. Do you think you could love someone like that, Richard?
‘Mum, has the library been in touch?’
I realised then why he was ringing. I was quiet.
‘The Bodleian. About his collection.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Really? That seems very odd. Are you sure?’
‘I think so.’
‘Could you let me know when they do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right? You sound like you’ve got a cold.’
‘Oh, I’m fine. I probably have got a cold.’
‘Are you warm enough? Have you got the heating on high?’
This was killing me now.
‘Oh, you know me,’ I managed to get out, ‘I’m always cold.’
‘You’re not to worry about the bill or anything like that.’ He even had the grace to sound embarrassed.
‘Thank you, Richard. You’re kind to think of it.’
‘No, no,’ suddenly brisk, ‘no risk of that,’ and we were fencing now, we were diplomats going through the various genuflections, hands together, hands apart, bowing, ducking, never meeting one another’s eyes.
‘Well …’ he said, finally, typically, ‘I’d better be off then.’
I sat by the phone for a long time. Then I picked it up and rang Bess. I ended up asking her to meet me for tea, a suggestion so ludicrous it shocked even me. She started going through her diary (her charity work, her book club, the asylum seeker welcome meeting, belly-dancing class, babysitting one of her many grandchildren).
‘What about tomorrow, then? We could try that new French place on Woodstock Road with all the cakes in the window.’
And before I could back-pedal, having realised what I had done, she was describing to me where the cafe was, but she couldn’t remember exactly, so she called out to Frank. ‘Frank! What used to be where that new French place is on Woodstock Road … French! What? No, that’s not right … Patel’s? But wasn’t that down near the … Oh, I see … Oh, right, yes, well in that case …’
‘Bess,’ I erupted (I am dying! I am dying!), ‘Bess, I must go. I’ll find it.’
I hung up. I felt as if I’d had an out-of-body experience. The thought of it, sitting in a new cafe on Woodstock Road with Bess, declining French pastries (sorry, dying from starvation, actually). I would have to ring her back to cancel. But what would I say?
I got very worked up about this, pacing around, banging myself on the head, until I decided that I simply wouldn’t turn up – but then she would probably come around to see me. Could I be dead by tomorrow, solve it like that? But there was still so much to burn and sort. I spent a tormented night.
In the morning I washed and dressed for the first time in many days. I put on good clothes, even the string of Venetian glass beads Bess had given me once for my birthday. I would not be attending the cafe, but I still hadn’t worked out how to extricate myself from the arrangement. I felt sick, sweaty.
In the end it didn’t matter. Bess rang a few hours before we were due to meet: Frank had had a fall and had just left in an ambulance. She was about to drive to the hospital. She was upset; he’d had a few falls before, but nothing this bad. I kept saying to her, It will be all right, Bess, he will be all right.
When she hung up I sat holding the receiver until it started to beep. I went to the window and sat down. I took the beads off, held them in my lap.
At dusk the students cycled back up the street; there was a slight incline I’d notice when I watched their legs, the way they lifted themselves from the seat. I went to the phone, dialled the number.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ he said, ‘is that what you want to hear me say? What is it you want me to say?’ but tiredly, as if he already knew there would be no answer, and then he hung up too.
42.
Oxford, January, 1951
My first performance in Oxford didn’t take long to arrange after all. It was an item in a charity concert to raise funds for a homeless shelter destroyed by a fire in the kitchen. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Maybe I would meet some people there who knew of other opportunities.
At the meeting to organise it, Hilary told me that I was to go last, and I should play something sweet to finish. Or spectacular, Bess said, smiling, sitting beside her.
I chose the ‘Dance of the Wild Horses’ piece from boarding school; a sentimental choice, and auspicious, I thought. I assumed Edward would come; I hoped my performance might even rekindle some of the admiration he had expressed during the Summer School. Perhaps it would prompt him to ask me to play for him again after dinner. But he told me he was too busy to attend; he might be in London or working in his office. I was disappointed but did not show it.
What went wrong first? The accents in that first line, which are meant to make the music sound like distant pounding hooves? I didn’t get the emphasis quite right, and then when the melody was introduced I was going too fast; I missed a note and my hands began to stiffen, as if tired. It was at this point that I started to hear something in the room other than my playing. A voice, very near, it was as if a demon had crawled onto my shoulder and was speaking directly into my ear. You are hopeless, it said. You are useless at everything. You are incompetent. You will ruin even this. And, by the way, your outfit is embarrassing. I was distracted by this, I started to swat at the voice and lost my place for a second; my hands stiffened even more. I started using other parts of my body to compensate, hunching up my shoulders, hardening my back, which was bent in its effort to contribute. I flung my whole body at the keyboard trying to keep up with that mad pace I’d set. The voice amplified to a shout, and single insults (Hopeless! Useless! Stupid! Incompetent! Liar!) exploded in direct competition with what I was playing. I skipped to the end, ripped the last glissando up the keyboard and down, caught a knuckle on the edge of a key, tore the skin, a streak of blood appeared across the keys. I crashed the final chord.
There was a pause then a smattering of applause. Hilary stood up at the front and with one arm directed people to the silent auction at the back of the room. They all turned their heads to look.
I raised my hand to my trembling mouth, tasted blood, closed the lid of the piano with the other.
43.
Oxford, February, 1951
Into the meadow. The wind held the scent of snow, everything was frozen. When I got out to the middle I started to spin, arms out, head back, turning, turning. The sky fell down beside me, under me, the vegetation was a blur, the grazing animals smeared, the horizon a jagged zig-zag, the ground beneath me jumped up, and when I fell I banged my hip and shoulder hard. Instead of getting up I rolled over, onto my back.