Fearful Symmetry

by Morag Joss

  ‘Loss is loss,’ Helene was saying. ‘People don’t begin to understand unless they’ve felt it themselves. Good old Helene will rise above it, that’s what they think. It’s not as if Adele was even normal. So that’s what I’ll do, rise above it, because I always have. It’s what I do. Oh, look, don’t let me get all self-pitying.’ Helene blew her nose. ‘I’m all right. It’s nice to talk to someone who does understand. You liked that drawing of hers you saw, didn’t you? The one like a snowflake? I’d like to show you something.’

  Helene rose and bent down to the dresser to pull out the deep bottom drawer, which was heavy and came slowly. It was full of artists’ notebooks of varying sizes. Helene picked up the top three, straightening up stiffly, and brought them to the table as Sara moved the remains of their lunch to the side of the sink to make room. Helene opened one of the books reverentially. Page after page of the sketchbook was filled with finely detailed and shaded pencil drawings of architectural ornamentation: scrolls, festoons, swags, figures, shells and leaves and other solid, carved-looking patterns and abstract shapes of variously Baroque, Regency, Rococo, Art Nouveau influence. As Sara turned the pages, dumbstruck, she saw that all of them had been set down with the same unerring accuracy that revealed not a moment’s wavering of certainty between hand and eye. They were not drawings of any whole buildings but more like designs for the ornamentation of doorways, windows, friezes, panels, columns, pilasters or fireplaces. And yet not so, because the artist had clearly been so caught up in creating patterns of intense, perfect symmetrical beauty that the designs, although drawn to look as if executed in plaster, wood or stone, were so detailed and fantastical as to be utterly unrealisable. Adele’s perfect built world was one of possible and yet impossible beauty, too fragile to be fingered into shape in any earthy material, imaginable only as if spun from hair or moulded out of the clouds.

  ‘They’re all beautiful,’ Sara said, turning the pages.

  Helene was smiling. ‘This is what my girl could do. Books and books of it. Everything from memory. A faithful record of real things, all of them symmetrical, most of them based on buildings in Bath. Somehow her eyes took in all the tiny details without her being aware of it at the time, and she could draw them afterwards, as if everything was stored in some extraordinary visual memory.’

  ‘Uncanny,’ Sara said, feeling the word inadequate.

  ‘I know. But it’s not as if it made up for everything. You’d give anything for normality sometimes,’ Helene said, eager for Sara to understand. ‘Just to have the normal problems of bringing up a child. I thought I could cope with that, you see, and manage a career as well. We thought she was just a difficult baby.’ She gazed in silence at a drawing of a classical stone urn.

  ‘Two seasons at the Met,’ she said, leafing gently through the book. ‘That’s as far as I got. Supporting roles: Michaela in Carmen, the maid in Trovatore. They might have led to greater things; I truly think they might. But by then Adele was having about a dozen tantrums a day. I couldn’t keep things together. I couldn’t keep a nanny. I couldn’t even keep my husband.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, nothing dramatic, in the end. Edward was still trying to get noticed in opera, as a director. He did one or two good things, but nothing much was happening. Then he got involved in some film of Don Giovanni and met people, went to Los Angeles. We didn’t go with him, and that was it, really. I can understand what an escape it must have been for him. In New York there was nothing but me, Adele, and no work. Nothing he wanted to come back to. He’s been doing things in movies ever since, but I couldn’t really tell you what. He’s been good about money. He’s still in LA. Called Ed now, of course.’

  There was the merest smile on her lips as she said this, looking down and turning the last leaf of the book. Sara thought back to Helene’s behaviour at the grim rehearsal she had sat through as Andrew’s stand-in, and was wondering why the woman kept this slightly wicked intelligence concealed behind all the showbiz guff. But perhaps the real reason for all the opera-luvvie flannelling was to hide not her worldly intelligence, but the pain and difficulty of being Adele’s mother.

  Helene went on, ‘I came back to England when Adele was five and then there were years of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. There was no question of school, she couldn’t even sit still. Six years looking for a diagnosis, being told one thing after another. Nobody mentioned autism until she was eleven. A lot of the time I pretended to look on the bright side. My training helped. I always know what impression I’m creating. After a while you don’t even need to pretend. You forget it’s acting, and by then you’ve convinced even yourself that you’re all right. Most of the time.’

  Helene sighed sadly at these words. Sara said nothing. How could she claim to understand, how would being sorry help? Helene looked up and smiled again, rousing herself in the manner of people who have trained themselves out of self-pity.

  ‘Coffee? Let’s have coffee. I’ve gone on disgracefully, haven’t I?’ As she set about making it, Helene lapsed a little into the manner she had just been describing, feeling perhaps a little over-exposed by the confidences she had entrusted. ‘Well now! So you’ve got a problem with Herve, have you? Fire away.’

  Sara explained carefully, without maligning either Herve or herself, about the row. ‘And I wondered, since the two of you do get on, if you’d just check up for me and see he’s all right? I don’t think he’d speak to me. I might even upset him again.’ She hesitated and added quickly, ‘But if he knew, you see, how sorry I was? It would make it easier. And I really am sorry. Not just that it happened, I mean sorry in case I helped cause it.’ She stopped. It simply was not in her constitution to be any humbler than that.

  ‘Of course I will. And I’ll suggest it was just a clash of artistic temperaments, which I expect it was,’ Helene said comfortingly. ‘To be truthful, now I’m feeling more up to things, I’m even more curious about Herve. The wonderful Herve Petrescu. He is rather wonderful, isn’t he? So distinguished-looking. In its way, it must be thrilling, working with him, apart from the row, I mean. How old is he? He’s not married, is he?’

  ‘He’s fifty-two. Not married and not seriously attached, either. I actually wish he were. He’d probably be better organised and a bit less of a big baby.’ Sara was surprised by the petulant edge in her own voice. Herve could make even her sound like a bit of a big baby too, damn him.

  Helene seemed to think so as well because she said, confidently, ‘Oh, you don’t understand him. You’re too young. I think a man like Herve—’ She took a sharp breath and looked hard at Sara, considering whether or not to carry on.

  ‘A man like Herve what?’

  ‘Well, I think he’s one of those men who are better off with someone older. It transforms them, an older woman. Look at Ivo Pogorelic. Herve’s probably the same.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely! He’d love anybody who’s prepared to be a complete doormat and run around mothering him and treating him like he’s the prince of light come down to walk among us. Then she’d become the aging hag who does all the tough stuff and he could carry on being the world’s cherub. Oh, yes, Herve’d love that. The trouble is he seems to think that’s what I’m here for.’

  As Helene turned round from the worktop with the tray of coffee, Sara saw her face and could have cut her own tongue out. It was too late; she could practically see the words ‘aging hag’ bouncing off the walls and colliding with each other in the air above them.

  ‘Well, you aren’t,’ Helene was saying smoothly, ‘clearly you aren’t. But perhaps a much older woman than you, more in sympathy with him, might do him a lot of good.’ She sipped from her coffee cup and cast a swift, sly look at Sara, who knew exactly what she meant. Neither of them added aloud that this older woman might, by way of sharing Herve’s international status as well as his money, be doing herself a bit of good, too. Whoever she might be.

  SARA HAD expected Jim to be at the shop, so she was startled to see
one of the two doors in the basement area swing open.

  ‘Good gracious me, come in! I thought I heard someone coming down. Come along in, how delightful! I can’t say I was expecting you!’ The hearty welcome and the gratitude on Jim’s beaten-looking face made Sara’s heart lurch with sympathy. He led her into a small but neat basement kitchen with a table and two comfortable old chairs. An iron spiral staircase led up from one corner. ‘You’ll have a cup of something? Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘No, no, thank you, really. I’ve just had lunch with Helene. In fact I’m just delivering these.’ She thrust out the bag with the plants in it.

  ‘Oh, for me? Oh, how wonderful!’ Jim drew the pots from the bag as if they were porcelain, and placed them on the table. There were tears in his eyes. ‘A rose. A white miniature rose. And winter pansies.’ His chin had started to wobble. ‘I’m sorry, I think I’m a little overcome.’ He pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket, sat down and began to weep quietly.

  Sara could not leave him like this. ‘Oh, Jim, I’m so sorry. The whole thing’s just so awful. So sad,’ she said, sitting down in the other chair.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t understand. It’s relief. I’m so relieved. And touched. I never thought she would, you see, and now these.’ He gestured to the plants on the table. ‘Of all the ones she could have given. Don’t you see? White rose for “my love is unsullied” and pansies for “my thoughts are with you”. The language of flowers. It’s a message. She is thinking of me, with love unimpaired by recent events. I can go to tonight’s rehearsal with an easy heart.’

  His joy was appalling to watch, because it was misplaced, but Sara could not rob him of it.

  ‘She just needed time, you see? I knew it. Perhaps she’s beginning to see at last that she and I need each other.’ Jim looked at her suddenly and clammed up, almost as if she had been eavesdropping and he had only just seen her. ‘I’ve been so rude. I haven’t even asked how you are. A death affects us all, doesn’t it? How are you managing?’

  ‘I’m all right, I suppose,’ Sara said, unwilling to think about, let alone reveal anything to Jim about her many miseries. ‘I just keep thinking there’s something wrong . . . I mean, I know that theoretically Adele could have done something like this at any time. It was always a possibility, but still, I can’t explain why, I’m finding it difficult to accept. It doesn’t seem real.’

  Jim shook his head. ‘It’s all too real to me. I try not to think about it, or about the court case. My lawyer says it might even be dropped and meantime I must think positive. I’ve got the place sorted out again, at least. I should try and get on with some work, but I haven’t found the heart.’

  Sara hesitated. ‘Will you show me? The workshop? I mean, I’m not even sure why I want to see it. But perhaps it’ll seem more understandable if I do.’

  If Jim was appalled at her curiosity he did not say so. ‘Well, yes, of course you may. Yes, I’ll show you round. No one’s seen it, actually, since the workmen finished, so perhaps it’ll help me too. Look forward and all that. It’s this way.’

  He led the way back out of the kitchen door and unlocked the smaller door next to it. A narrow passage ran straight down to another door at the end, which he also unlocked. ‘This was a basement bedsit when I bought the place,’ he said, stepping in and holding open the door. ‘Separate entrance and so on, quite self-contained. I’ve got my kitchen, as you saw, and upstairs a decent-sized sitting room-cum-bedroom and a little bathroom. Quite adequate for just me. This house is typical Circus, all regular on the outside and mucked about on the inside.’

  Sara was staring round the room. It was high and very light for a basement, and rectangular. The only inappropriate reminder of its bedsit use was a thin corner partition with a cheap door, presumably with the loo and shower behind it. It was unremarkably functional, with its worktops, table and shelving, but it was cold and smelled damply new. The door had not been opened for days. No work in progress, let alone work completed or work to get started on, was anywhere in evidence. The one large window of opaque glass at the back was barred.

  ‘I had plans to knock through from my kitchen when I moved in,’ Jim said, ‘but I changed my mind. That window’s barred, and outside the garden’s surrounded by eight-foot brick walls. And there are two doors into here, so it made it nice and secure for a workshop full of antiques.’ His voiced tailed off almost to a whisper. ‘Fine and secure, yes. That’s what it was. Very private.’ He closed his eyes against the mental picture of Adele with her skirt up, impassive on the couch, and swallowed. Nobody would ever know, now. So why could he not stop thinking about it?

  He waved an arm towards the gap in a line of floor cupboards, bridged by a new piece of worktop. ‘Adele never showed the slightest interest in the cooker. I only kept it there for heating glue and whatnot, for the ceramics work. And before she came I was so busy I usually worked over lunchtime and warmed something up. She only ever used the electric kettle. She only used warm soapy water for the chandeliers. I never dreamed it was unsafe for her here, I would never . . . I never thought . . .’ He was fishing for his handkerchief again.

  ‘Oh, Jim, nobody did. Nobody saw what might happen. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I would have been here, you see, normally. Adele always locked up both doors and went home at four. I’d get back later and just check the outer door was locked; it always was. And next day I’d see her first thing, get her started and then go down to the shop. Only this time I didn’t. I left straight from the shop the night before and stayed at a pub in Odstock—it’s got rooms—because the sale in Salisbury started at nine and I wanted to view at eight. I gave up most of those terribly early starts when I turned sixty. So I’d left two days’ work out for her. I’d done it once or twice before.’

  ‘Jim, the cooker. It was just an ordinary gas cooker, wasn’t it, with dials for the burners? How many? Where were they arranged?’

  ‘Well, yes, quite ordinary. Not terribly modern. There would have been . . . oh, six dials. Four for the top, one for the grill and another for the oven.’

  ‘All in a row, along the front?’

  ‘Good God, what’s it matter where they were?’

  He sounded irritated, like someone who has craved company but found it, when it came, disappointing. Sara thought that perhaps what Jim needed was not her troublesome and irrelevant questioning, but absolution which was not hers to give.

  ‘Jim, you’ve done wonders here,’ she said, turning towards the door. ‘I’m sure you’ll get things going again, once you’re over the shock. Nobody thinks you were to blame.’

  ‘Thank you, you’re most kind,’ Jim said stiffly. He was not of a generation that could weep openly and not afterwards be a little pompous. ‘You are most kind. And now I mustn’t keep you.’

  Jim led the way out of the workshop, said goodbye in the area and returned through the other door back into his kitchen. At the top of the steps Sara turned to see if he might be at the window to wave her off. But he was standing at the sink and watering the compost round his new plants from a milk bottle, smiling.

  CHAPTER 26

  SO, PHIL, HOW’S this fortnight been?’

  Penny Meakins spoke with a smile in her voice, looked up to establish appropriate (neither tentative nor intimidating) eye contact, leaned back slightly to signal non-threatening but receptive body language and allowed the trained silence to prevail, during which she felt her jaw swell and sink as if someone were trying to shove a length of drainpipe down her throat. Her eyes were watering, but she would not yawn, although the effort of not doing so was making her swallow like a cat being made to take a worming tablet.

  ‘Aw, it’s been okay, really. Not feeling too bad last week.’

  You could never tell, with this one, whether or not he meant it. Three interminable bloody terms coming every other Wednesday and he still behaved as if he thought it was rude to talk about himself. Self-effacement to this degree was an affectation that she did not have time
for. She smiled with irritation.

  ‘Tell me a bit about your work. How’s that going?’

  ‘Aw, it’s been okay. I’m going to all my lectures. Mr Frewer gave me an extension, so now that also okay.’

  ‘Okay. That’s for his essay, is it? So you gave him the note I gave you, and he understood all the factors relating to the stress you were experiencing.’

  ‘That’s right. He said I could have a chat any time with him about it, no problem.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Naw. He never in his room.’

  ‘How about the’—Penny Meakins glanced at her notes—‘the, er, resit you only just scraped through. That result was making you very depressed in early September. We’re nearly at the end of October now. Have you made any progress there?’

  Phil appeared to have forgotten about what had been depressing him in September, the memory no doubt crowded out by the pressing demands of things depressing him in October. ‘Er, well, that all okay now,’ he said vaguely. ‘I can done some more revision, my lecturer say. He say not to worry.’

  How boring. Eleven years ago when she’d started here as a student counsellor it had been practically impossible to get any leeway out of the teaching staff. She had run workshops, introducing concepts such as stress loading, whole student wellbeing and unacceptable performance pressure to sceptical academics who had retaliated with expressions like cotton wool, old-fashioned hard work and thin end of the wedge. She’d fought some battles in the early days (in non-confrontational modes, of course) against that sort of prejudice. But now the academics were floppier than she had ever been. It was the lecturers who most often these days referred students to her, and they who were endlessly understanding of writing blocks, late assignments, and essay after essay being simply no bloody good. And that was just the ones who weren’t clients themselves. She, on the other hand, had probably been in it too long; she felt all counselled out. A career move was in order, into running assault courses for middle managers or something. She could just picture herself shrieking at humiliated executives to grab on the ropes, the ones that would swing them straight into pits of shit-coloured mud. It was time for her to do some work on her own aggression, she realised, noticing that once again she was itching to tell Phil to go and get laid, or get some work done. She took a few deep breaths.