Torn

by Gilli Allan

  James directed her to a car park on the far side of the river from the centre of town. The morning was still dry, but it was cool, and grey clouds hung oppressively low. They crossed the Avon on the chain ferry and he led her up to Holy Trinity Church, set on the tree-clad slope above the river. James evidently knew the church and had no need to follow the herd. He stood back as Jessica, amid the mob of American and Japanese tourists swathed in cameras, gazed first at the broken font where Shakespeare was baptised and then at his bust, quill in hand, set in the chancel wall above his gravestone. She dutifully read all the inscriptions and their translations.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ she whispered to him when she regained his side. ‘It makes it more real somehow, yet it was such a long time ago. Amazing that the original font should have survived.’

  ‘He became rich and well known in his own lifetime. Always helps when it comes to the preservation of the legend.’

  ‘Legend?’ Jess queried. ‘Do you doubt it was Shakespeare who wrote the plays?’

  ‘For every significant bit of history which hasn’t had all its Is dotted and Ts crossed there’s room for the conspiracy theorists.’

  ‘Surely the challenge has always been based on a class thing? Like … only someone from the top drawer of society could possibly have written those plays and sonnets. You can almost hear the doubts. How on earth could the author have been the provincial son of a glove maker?’

  ‘Someone who not only didn’t go to university, but probably dropped out of school as well. Trouble is, there is absolutely no verifiable, extant manuscript evidence in Will’s hand which proves his authorship.’

  ‘So it could have been Bacon or Marlowe?’ she suggested.

  ‘Or Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford? It’s widely acknowledged these days that for a couple of the plays he collaborated with other authors … Middleton and Fletcher. And the rest were probably not so much written as developed in rehearsal, with a certain amount of improvisation and ad-libbing, then refined during Will’s lifetime.’

  ‘You think he was a Tudor Mike Leigh?’ Jess said.

  ‘Maybe.’ James smiled. ‘And then there’s the question over forgery.’

  ‘I’ve never heard anything about forgery.’

  ‘In the nineteenth century there was a disgruntled, but clever Shakespeare scholar called John Payne Collier who made a habit of finding critical documents which filled in blanks in the canon. He was unmasked as a forger in 1850 something. Even now there may still be some corrupted texts. Ultimately I believe that William Shakespeare was “William Shakespeare”. The scepticism about his authorship has only arisen in the centuries since. There’s no evidence of rumours flying around in Will’s lifetime amongst contemporaries like Ben Jonson. If there had been any doubts worth taking seriously, they’d have been expressed at the time by his contemporaries and rivals, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘You’ve convinced me.’

  ‘Did you need convincing?’

  ‘It’s not a subject I’ve ever really studied … apart from at school.’ They’d been walking away from the church along the bank of the river in the direction of the theatre. Swans and cygnets, ducks and ducklings swimming in the shallows eyed them hopefully. One of the swans stretched its white muscular body upright from the water and flapped its wings. A fan of droplets sprayed out.

  ‘They are such stunning creatures.’ Jess said. ‘I’ve heard that they mate for life. If the pen or cob is killed, shot by some bastard with an air rifle or poisoned by discarded fishing weights, the remaining mate remains celibate. Sometimes they pine away, eventually dying of a broken heart.’ She was instantly washed with embarrassment at both her flight into sentiment, and her tactlessness. He was the last person to need reminding of the loss of a mate. ‘I’m sorry. What a stupid thing to say!’

  James looked down at her quizzically. ‘But true, from my sketchy knowledge of natural history, if a tad … anthropomorphically expressed!’

  This made Jess laugh; she pushed her hand through the crook of his arm, impelled by a sudden fondness for the man. He lightly squeezed her hand in return.

  ‘What about lunch? Do you fancy trying the Dirty Duck, where the RSC actors are said to hang out? Not that I’ve ever spotted one there.’

  Today, as far as they could tell, there were no celebrities. They sat opposite one another in a bay window, both drinking beer and eating bread and cheese.

  ‘This is lovely,’ Jessica said lamely, to fill a sudden silence. ‘Shame about the weather.’

  ‘It’s going to be chilly on the river. Perhaps we’d do better to trail around town after the Japanese, who’ll be oohing and aahing at the half-timbered shops, virtually all of which are Victorian, of course. We could look at Hall’s Croft. Will’s son-in-law’s place. He was a physician. There are some pretty scary implements on display. Then there’s Will’s birthplace, no original furnishings as I remember, but they’ve recreated the period. Or the museum of costumes …’

  ‘I’ve got my waterproofs. I don’t mind the damp. I’m getting to be quite an outdoor type, these days.’

  ‘There’s nothing you particularly want to see?’

  ‘No. Not this time.’ Why did she say that? It implied she expected him to bring her again. ‘You seem to know the place. Did you come here with your wife?’ Every time she opened her mouth some crass remark emerged of its own accord! She was just about to apologise when he answered.

  ‘No. We’d come from Oxford … make up a party of like-minded undergrads … hire a minibus. Serena wasn’t particularly interested in theatre … or history … or culture.’

  ‘So how did you two meet?’

  ‘Through work. You know I worked in an ad agency? You can go to the model agencies’ websites, where they’ve got the mug-shots. I was fascinated by Serena. Kept finding myself drawn back to her, selecting her for different jobs. In the end I had to come clean and admit to myself that I fancied her. Not just the normal stirrings of any red blooded male for a pretty woman, but something more … consuming. So I asked her out. The rest is, as they say, history.’

  ‘And Imogen was a friend of hers? Is that how Piers met her?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. To be honest I can’t really remember whether Piers had already met Imo, used her on a job, whatever …’ He shrugged. ‘The fact the two girls were already friends maybe helped to cement his and Imogen’s relationship, and probably mine and Serena’s too. Made it easier, more relaxed, going out as foursome. Trouble was, I was too young.’ His last comment was surprising. ‘Beauty can be very deceptive. You can be blinded by it.’

  ‘What was this leading to? The widower’s version of, “My wife doesn’t understand me”? But he said no more.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘When we married? Twenty-eight. Admittedly not that young in years, but emotionally young, I now suspect. And before you ask, Serena was twenty-one … definitely too young! By the time we’d been married three years we were expecting Sasha, by the time we’d been married five Serena was dead, killed in a motorway pile-up.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Do you know why it happened? Weather conditions …?’

  ‘It was a sunny summer morning.’ After a pause he added, ‘The accident was her fault. Always was an impatient driver. Apparently she overtook on the inside lane. There was evidence she was fiddling with her mobile, maybe texting. She returned to the middle lane just as another car, overtaking in the fast lane, returned to the middle. They side-swiped one another and span. They were then hit by several other vehicles. The other car overturned. By some miracle … low centre of gravity perhaps … her car stayed on its wheels. Sash was in the back and was pulled out unhurt. Serena had to be cut out. She was unrecognisable. Both the other people in the original collision, an older couple, were killed, so was a man in one of the other vehicles.’

  She looked at his taut face; though staring out of the window his narrowed eyes were unfocused. In the face of what he’d just told her she felt inadequat
e.

  ‘I … I don’t know what to say.’

  His eyes shifted back to her. ‘Don’t worry. There is nothing to say, is there? It was just a random stroke of fate. It might help if I was a religious man and thought Serena had been whisked up to a better world by God and his angels. Then Sasha, at least, might stand a chance of being reunited with her mother.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m not so vain as to think God would want me up there. Dare say I’m headed for another place.’

  ‘If there is a God how does He have the nerve to differentiate between the creatures He created? I can’t believe in a God who is so petty that He expects us not just to overcome the faults and failings He gave us, but to transcend the desperate environments He landed some of us in!’

  ‘I’m sorry? Does that mean you think I must be headed for heaven as well, or is it a “don’t know” on the whole subject?’

  ‘It’s a “don’t know”.’ Jessica was glad to see him laugh then. ‘James, Imogen said something to me after dinner the other night.’

  His eyebrows went up. ‘Oh yes. And what did Imo have to say?’

  ‘You don’t like her?’ Jess said, suddenly convinced of this.

  ‘Piers and I go back a long way. He kind of reinvented himself at Oxford, and the invention is growing increasingly bizarre! These days I sometimes wonder if he hasn’t fallen completely off his trolley. But I’m still very fond of the old bastard, and Imogen is his partner.’

  ‘She comes with the package, so you have to put up with her?’

  ‘Imogen was a bad influence on Serena, and I think she’s unnecessarily and deliberately cruel. Cruelty has to be accurate and well-aimed to be amusing, or even acceptable. On Sasha’s birthday I was aware of her having a go at Side – I mean Dan. Possibly she was getting at Piers, but either way it was undeserved and needlessly hurtful.’

  Jessica had noticed it too. ‘But how was she a bad influence on your wife?’

  ‘Imogen and someone else, whose name I will forbear to mention. It was Serena’s decision, and I mean totally her decision, to give up work and move out of London … take on the farm. Admittedly things didn’t turn out to be quite as hunky-dory as we’d both expected. But we decided, together, to try and make a go of it. But almost as soon as we moved in, Imogen was on the phone trying to woo Serena back to work; her excuse … that clients were still asking for her. She should have said Serena had retired, should have taken down her photo.’

  ‘Imogen tells it slightly differently.’

  ‘I bet she does.’

  ‘Says it was Serena pestering her to find work.’

  ‘Sounds better that way round, doesn’t it? Trouble is Imogen has always put money at the top of her list of priorities. She couldn’t bear to let any opportunity slip through her fingers.’ He sat back in his chair and regarded her with pursed lips. ‘But that’s enough about me, my friends, my history. What about you, Jessica?’

  ‘Surely we ought to go and catch a boat if we want to do the river trip and be back in good time for the performance?’

  Given the number of tourists in town there were fewer takers than might have been expected for the river trip. Perhaps the cool, damp weather had put them off. Jessica was not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed not to be crowded hugger mugger with the chattering Japanese or laconic Americans. Once the few passengers had distributed themselves around the boat it could almost seem as if they were travelling alone on a craft chartered purely for their own pleasure.

  The sky was pewter grey; the budding trees which overhung the bronze-sheened water were faded by a pearly mist. Yet the slow pace, coupled with the soft focus beauty of each unfolding vista as the boat followed the twists of the river, was deeply tranquillising. Here and there, where young leaves were beginning to emerge, the trees were veiled in soft sage and copper. New growth hung like limp green rags from the unfurling sticky buds on the horse chestnut trees.

  Ahead of them, at each turn, a new scene was revealed, with its full complement of waterfowl. The ubiquitous swans, ducks, coots, and moorhens ignored the boat and carried on with their own lives; some dipped their heads beneath the river’s glassy surface, or turned tail-up; some scooted across the water peeping; others stretched and flapped wings or preened insouciantly. It didn’t matter to Jess that after only a minute or two her cheeks were dewed with moisture, that her nose was cold and probably red, or that the damp chill was creeping in under her waterproof jacket. She was enjoying herself.

  ‘Is this mist or is it drizzle?’ she asked brushing her face then thrusting the cold damp hand back in her pocket.

  ‘The precise definition eludes me. You’d have to ask Richard Anguin.’

  The reference was to the weatherman on the local BBC television news. Jess glanced up at his similarly wet face, but he was looking ahead as the boat made its stately progress around the next bend.

  ‘The ducks and swans seem to appear on cue, don’t they, just to add that picturesque touch?’ Jess said. ‘They’re so beautiful and intriguing but don’t you think their lives must be phenomenally boring?’

  ‘Or the life of a cow? Or a sheep? It would be to us, which is possibly one of the qualities that makes us human … the capacity for boredom. Most animals have very short-term memories. If you don’t remember that all you’ve done all your life is eat and defecate then you can’t be bored by it, can you?’

  ‘So how does that square with swans mating for life? If they don’t remember their deceased mate, what makes them pine away, or turn their beaks up at the prospect of another pairing?’

  ‘Turn their beaks up?’ James laughed. ‘I did English, not ornithology! If that is true, then I suppose it must be instinct. Swans are born with the instinct to form one pair bond and one only. So, on the purely reproductive, stroke genetic level, their purpose in life is over if the mate is killed.’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing we’re not all like swans, isn’t it.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ he answered.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Jessica turned to him and grabbed hold of his hand with both of hers. ‘I can’t seem to stop myself from putting my foot in my mouth. I keep saying the most crass and tactless things!’

  ‘Stop worrying. I’m not so sensitive! Please don’t pussy-foot around my feelings. I prefer you to be straightforward. I don’t mind being compared to a swan … their serenity and grace is appealing, but don’t forget all that frantic paddling below the surface which maintains the illusion. As for mating once, then dying of a broken heart … I’m not about to throw in the towel. I’ve still got a job to do, a child to bring up and see off into the world. And as far as celibacy goes? Well, not very far, as it happens. I’ve already broken my duck, for all Imogen’s hints that I’m still the grief-struck tragedian, forever carrying a torch, with the accompanying subtext that by now I really should have pulled myself together … Your hands are very cold.’

  ‘Yours are warm.’

  ‘Then, according to the saying, you have the warm heart, not I. I’ll warm them up.’ He folded both of her hands into his own and held them there.

  ‘I’m going to get a crick in my back if I sit like this for any length of time!’

  ‘OK. Then I’ll move up closer.’ As he spoke he fitted action to words. ‘And put this arm round you, then I can still hold both your hands, but in your lap. Then you can lean back against me and be comfortable.’

  It was comfortable, much more comfortable than she’d been before with just the wooden slatted bench to rest against.

  ‘What you were saying?’

  ‘About breaking my duck? It’s a cricketing term, means I’ve scored.’

  ‘I know what it means. So, are you in a relationship now?’ It was a question which suddenly seemed important. Easier to ask from a position where she couldn’t see his face, and he couldn’t see hers. There was a short grunt of a laugh.

  ‘Hardly! I’ve allowed myself to be picked up a few times when I
’ve been in London and stopped overnight at a hotel. It’s always been a strictly no questions asked, condom job. Ultimately unrewarding but at least proved everything was still in working order.’

  ‘And before?’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before Serena?’

  ‘Ah! I was single and I had money. I was one of the lads … doing what lads do, whenever and wherever there was a willing female to do it with! Why do you ask?’

  ‘Why do you think? Future ammunition!’

  He leant forward and took a sideways look at her face. ‘You’re making me nervous, Jessica Avery.’

  After the final curtain came down between the players and the whistling, cheering, and wildly clapping audience, they went up to the table reserved in the theatre’s curved Rooftop Restaurant. Architecture in general, and specifically the remodelling of the old art deco theatre, was the first subject to figure in their conversation. Jess bemoaned the lack of view through the lofty, ceiling-high windows. The Avon was a stripe of inky dark. Only the illuminated terrace below them could be seen and the lights from across the river.

  ‘Not the architect’s fault,’ James said. ‘It’s nearly midnight.’

  Jessica still evaded any revelation, beyond the superficial, of her own past and instead steered the conversation back to the production.

  ‘It was brilliant, hilarious. I never expected it to be so funny! I was crying with laughter when the knight in armour and the pantomime camel chased across the back!’

  ‘Like the Keystone Cops and the Marx Brothers mixed together. Think I also detected shades of classic film noir.’

  ‘Thank you so much for bringing me.’

  ‘Well, thank you for coming. I was glad of the company.’

  ‘And this has been nice too.’ She indicated their emptied plates.

  ‘Yes. A big improvement on the old Boxtree Restaurant. Just as well. At this time of night there’s not much else available. I’m glad you liked it.’ He caught the waiter’s attention and mimed a scribble across his palm.