by David Storey
‘Anyone,’ he tells me. ‘Why have they left her,’ he asks me, ‘alone?’
Then we encounter, hurrying towards us, two female attendants I recognise and a suited male figure I have never seen before.
‘I heard you’d arrived. We can go in here,’ he says, dismissing the two women.
As tall as Gerry – a curious replica of him, if younger – dressed in a grey suit, white shirt, dark tie: I take in the particulars as we enter the room where, the previous day, we’ve seen Ryman. A figure is standing at the bookshelves, female, skirted, her back to the door. This, too, I take in, assuming, for a moment, it might be her.
‘Could you leave us?’ the suited figure enquires. He indicates the chairs, still in position from where we have sat the previous evening.
The woman, bowing, has gone to the door, closing it behind her.
‘I’m Doctor Stepney. Doctor Ryman is away.’ He dismisses this with a wave of his hand, waiting for Gerry to be seated, then myself.
‘Has anything happened?’ Gerry’s gaze – my father’s gaze – remains fixed on his younger facsimile’s face: a hawk-like presence, rounded eyes set deeply on either side of a prominent nose, the mouth, thin-lipped, broad, used to expelling thought in lieu of feeling.
‘I’m afraid I’ve bad news,’ leaning forward to the desk, realities involved of which we cannot, even remotely, be aware – looking to enquire of Gerry if I should stay.
‘It’s okay.’
The way he would signal a shot on the studio floor: a climactic moment for both of us.
‘Mrs Audlin injured herself this lunchtime. She ran the bath in her room, climbed in, and cut her wrists. There’s no doubt of her intention.’
Maybe my reaction I’m projecting onto Gerry: a bolt driven, for instance, up the centre of the body: the mind flashes in the message and, just as swiftly, flashes it out.
‘Is she dead?’ the words placed like objects on the desk, this a scene where the script has several possibilities, not least that she still is alive, the worst of the news already broken.
‘I’m very sorry. It was when she failed to come through for lunch …’
The words arrive with coldness, precision.
‘The wisdom of telling her what she was told yesterday is, of course, in question.’
Of course.
Gerry looks at me as if, at that moment, he is falling off a cliff – or through the ice, this, the look tells me, the end of everything between us.
‘Did she speak to anyone?’ he asks.
‘She spoke to you this morning.’
‘Briefly.’
‘To no one else we know.’
‘I got the impression she was excited at our coming. Very much so. I brought it forward from the evening because of that.’
This is the beginning of lunacy, my inheritance, the legacy she has left me.
‘If she’s still here I’d like to see her.’
The words could be mine but, more certainly, are his.
My chair is angled to the window: this was where Martha was sitting the previous evening – someone, in reality, I scarcely knew – and yet know better now than anyone.
Gerry is rising, the figure behind the desk crossing to the door: the route is being described to a hospital. I am, to all intents and purposes, still focused on the chair. What have I done which was incorrect? Has the body she sought turned up at last?
Is everything to be like this for ever?
Charlie’s impassive figure before us, we drive in silence, occasionally stopping for instructions – the hospital, a modern edifice, finally appearing across farm fields. The attendant at the reception-counter appears to have been forewarned: we are directed to a corridor leading to the rear of the building: a flight of steps descends to a subterranean passage.
There are chairs around the room to which we are finally shown. Invited to sit we scrutinise the interior – windowless, illuminated by plastic panels let into the ceiling – Gerry unsure, I can see, of what we ought to do, stunned, grave – submitting himself to forces of which he has had no previous experience: none of this accords with how he is: it all goes on without him, without me, I an afterthought (almost an abortion).
I wonder if he will speak: he looks at me, I look at him: his breathing, as in the car, emerges in gasps and groans.
The overalled attendant who has directed us to the room reappears through a further door: he beckons us to enter.
‘You don’t have to come in,’ Gerry says.
‘I have to.’
Wordless, he signals me before him.
In the room beyond a figure, unrecognisable as Martha, lies on what I assume to be a bier. There is no light other than from a frosted panel let into the lowered ceiling.
She is lying beneath a sheet, her head considerably smaller than anything I recall, her skin grey, green, obscene: only slowly do I recognise the arching of the nose, the contour of the cheek: the colour of her hair.
How could she choose to end like this? What, I enquire, has she achieved?
The sheet reveals the configuration of her body: her feet, her hips: it ends beneath her chin in a folded, clinical, clear-cut line.
Gerry is feeling for her hand: half his arm disappears beneath the sheet: words, until now unformed, are suddenly clear. ‘Oh, my dear,’ he says, ‘my love.’
I look into her face: her nostrils, her ears, her mouth: it’s as if, even now, she’s about to speak, her lips, like her eyelids, not fully closed.
Almost mechanically I kiss her brow, her skin colder than anything I have ever known.
‘Maybe,’ Gerry says, ‘I should be alone.’
It’s as if he’s announcing he, too, has died.
I sit outside for an immeasurable time, Gerry coming into the room so quietly I’m unaware. His eyes are reddened, his face is wet. ‘Do you want to see her on your own?’ he says.
Placing his hand on my shoulder, he walks me to the door.
The attendant, having entered from a door the other side, is about to remove the body.
I, unable to express precisely what I want, enquire, ‘Could I see my mother?’
He goes, his look avoiding mine, adjusting the sheet before departing.
Nothing has changed: I expect her, at any moment, to open her eyes, explain this is a scene which, if rehearsed, has been excised – instead, her silent, impressive, final expression (this, it informs me, the end of the road).
BOOK FOUR
1
I am sitting in the dining car – fuller than on the previous occasion – writing.
She is, at first, I believe, a mirage – taking the seat opposite, putting out her hand, announcing, ‘I thought it was you when we first came in,’ indicating not one figure but three sitting at a nearby table: her parents, I assume, and the previous companion.
Two other people are sitting at my table. She, concluding from my expression they have nothing to do with me (an elderly man and woman finishing their tea), adds, ‘I heard so much about you and your mother.’
The word ‘mother’ reverberates around the carriage, the macabre story (‘the crime’) has been prominently in the press (on television, on the radio), wherever the legend of Miss Geraldine O’Neill finds favour.
Only in one report has there been a reference to her ‘son’: his attendance at the funeral (cremated: the ashes to be taken to – of all places – a so-far unnamed village in Devon). Gerry, meanwhile, the recipient of tributes to his ‘stoicism’, his ‘courage’ (‘fidelity’ to a woman he ‘never abandoned’: the ‘tragedy’ of her inglorious decline).
Death doth not leave us but accompanies us in the happiest of guises – runs the rhythm of the wheels as I write my memorandum – glancing up to see her.
‘We see a great deal of your aunt,’ she says.
She gestures to her companions: hazel eyes, reddish hair, a hybrid colouring, pale skin, plainer – significantly plainer, I decide – than on the previous occasion, I realising she wears
no make-up.
‘And your uncle.’
‘How?’ I enquire.
‘We belong to the same societies. Particularly the Historical. In our town it’s very strong.’
I am travelling back to Clare – and James – because, I assume, Gerry can think of nothing else to do with me, the limited time he can give to me increasing his anxiety, which arouses his irritability, his irritability provoking his increasing sense of desolation (our living together impossible).
In addition, of course, I remind him of her.
I’ve seen O’Connor again, at Gerry’s (absurd) suggestion – not, this time, at Jubilee Hall but in his flat: he has recently left his wife and children and is living with a ménage of fellow analysts and their admirers above a shop in Marylebone High Street: an unchastened figure, receptive (attentive) to what I have to say (not a lot), he anxious I get my feelings ‘into the open’. ‘She would have done it in any case. She was only waiting the chance’ (his conclusion).
‘Did you know that before you told me?’ I enquire, he regarding me for some time before he shakes his head.
‘You were her only chance to do otherwise,’ he says.
Tough – and delicate – this current Martha: I wondering why I likened her to someone who was my mother (unlike her in appearance), and realise it is the disregard with which she apprehends everything, not only me (for which I find, surprisingly, I am grateful: a fellow spirit, too, of course).
Gerry is putting me ‘in care’ (‘with someone who loves you. I’ve talked to her. And James. We’ve all been very frank’).
‘Odd, the coincidence,’ Martha says. ‘Meeting like this. I believe in coincidence. Governed by things we otherwise never see.’
Small, even teeth, thin lips, broad and upward-curving: smiling.
‘You think so?’
‘Yes.’
She looks at me intently: ‘You look much older,’ she adds.
‘I am.’
‘Even than that.’
She smiles again.
‘The Literary Society,’ she says, ‘is another. An interest which your aunt and particularly your uncle share.’
‘I’m not up on literature,’ I tell her.
‘They tell me that you are.’
‘Mistaken.’
‘Didn’t I see you writing?’
‘A reminder.’
‘Of what?’
‘I forget.’
She laughs, leaning back, at which the couple on the inside table decide to leave, I standing to allow them past: a bow from the man, a smile from the woman.
Another scenario, a different film.
She is – I know the signs – signalling her calling, her hands, her delicate hands – rings on her fingers – additional signs of self-possession.
A dark jacket, a white blouse – presumably a skirt, hair curved, rather than curled, around her ears: her chin, with its hint of stubbornness, reminds me of my mother.
‘Another trip to London?’ I ask.
‘It was.’
‘If I’d known we could have met.’
‘I thought you’d probably have had enough to deal with,’ the fields, the woodland flying past, somewhere in the same latitude as Market Whelling.
I am, seeing my reflection in the glass, marking my removal: Grosvenor Street, the office, Audlin Productions, Pinewood: the cremation, I standing with Gerry at the door (at his insistence) greeting everyone on departure, the ‘son and heir’ (at last).
Ordained by him, I imagine, this meeting (he, unlike the previous occasion, taking time out to see me off at King’s Cross), I, involuntarily, glancing round for the girl, not seeing her, and then, just as absently, forgetting her: another element in the script which he is busily (I imagine) rewriting: ‘Don’t think this is for ever,’ he whispers as he embraces me. ‘Just until this film is over,’ waving as the train slides out (‘We’re the only family left,’ he tells me. ‘But for James and Clare’).
He is not cut out for ‘family’: he is only cut out for speed: anyone passing him in the street would not realise who or what he was. What I am. What she is: we speed along together.
‘And that other coincidence,’ she says.
‘Other?’ I enquire.
This I’ve forgotten, her appearance alone my preoccupation.
‘I only knew of her as Geraldine O’Neill. Why did she change it to that?’
‘Too provincial. Matriarchal. Her surname too English.’
This is it, bringing our independent tracks together – wheeling, arrested, rocking back – a dangerous procedure.
‘Why don’t I introduce you to my parents?’
‘Probably not.’
‘That’s okay.’ Amused, she adds, ‘Pushing it too far.’
‘I very much came up to be on my own.’
‘Want me to go?’
‘Maybe I should take your number,’ copying it down as she dictates, she adding, ‘Yours I’ve got. Mr and Mrs Audlin’s,’ and, shaking my hand, is gone – taking her seat along the carriage, smiling down the length of it, her parents and her companion glancing back.
It’s Clare – more shrunken than before – who recognises me down the platform: our kisses amusingly collide, the intimacy of our previous encounter subsumed in the ambivalence of our embrace: the moistness of her lips, the smell of her perfume, the fragility of her figure.
In the car her hand comes across to clasp my own (she has come alone to meet me): little, initially, is said, much unspoken. ‘You’ll see great changes in the garden. Wasn’t that Martha Armitage I saw at the station?’ she finally enquires. ‘Her parents and she we often meet.’
‘So she said.’
‘You spoke to one another?’
‘I took her number.’
I am watching the familiar road unwind as we drive up out of town. ‘James is at work,’ she explains. ‘Though he’s looking forward to seeing you. We’ve missed you,’ she concludes, ‘so much. Me, need I say, of course, especially.’
The mechanics of the process preoccupy me the most: one in which I have had, previously, by her, to be instructed: the look in her eyes, as if the penetration had reached this far inside, the suffusion flooding the warmth of her face: the final candour of her smile as she draws back to examine mine.
Is this, I reflect, what Gerry (and James) have arranged?
‘We must seem,’ I tell her, ‘a strange household.’
We are back downstairs in the sitting room, awaiting James’s return from work (the sun setting on the hill at the back of the house, penetrating the windows at the front).
‘Strange to whom?’
I gesture round. ‘Your housekeeper. Your friends.’
‘You’re a celebrity,’ she says. ‘I can’t tell you how high you’ve risen in their esteem since the tragedy of your mother. I want you to talk about it as freely as you wish. We’re able to offer each other so much. The tragedy,’ she goes on, ‘affects us all. Each one of us has played a part.’
We sit admiring one another – I her humour, her smile (her accessibility) the most constant thing about her: ‘We must move forward from this together,’ she tells me. ‘I spoke to Gavin who says Gerry is more devastated than when Ian died. That man is plagued by tragedy. I don’t know why he doesn’t leave that business. Surely he’s made enough by now? If he hasn’t, it’s not through want of trying. And Martha. Her estate. It all devolves to you.’
‘When I come of age.’
‘Held in trust by Gerry.’
I am well endowed, Gerry dependent on me for whatever wealth we have: much, however, has been spent on Homes, though homes, ironically, we’ve never had.
Or have I finally reached one?
That evening we celebrate my return by going into town: Clare’s favourite restaurant: Dougall’s: an Edwardian interior of wood-panelled walls, coats-of-arms and discreetly illuminated paintings (landscapes, mainly) – full of women, most of whom she appears to know: the enclosure and, at the same time,
the outward-looking, the self-assurance, the generous regard: a ‘mother’, on the one hand, an idealised ‘sport’, on the other – one of those agencies put on earth to enthrall, distract (no more untruths or half-truths between us): no more dissemblement, subterfuge, lies: even the waiters call out to her: ‘Mrs Audlin! Good to see you!’ she taking my arm as we leave.
Life at ‘Uplands’ – as they have named the house since my previous visit – a plaque on the metal gates – begins: a way of life which takes me, on several occasions, to James’s office, a recently converted structure fronting the rejuvenated river, with its walks and gardens, restaurants and flats replacing the quays, warehouses, factories and mills.
His office occupies the second floor of the building, looking across the river to the pleasure craft moored by the opposite bank: a desk stands asymmetrical to the window so that he can simultaneously look out and at whoever comes in the door. From a drawer, on one visit, he produces a file: a ream of closely written-on sheets, the scrawl of ink, at first sight, a hieroglyphic (a sense of writing done with a frantic, ferocious concentration). Similarly, at home, he has shown me his study at the back of the house – looking up to the hill with its crest of pines – producing from his desk seven manuscripts, each creased from being passed from hand to hand, one of which has been recently returned with a suggestion he broadens the confinement of its plot from the world of insurance: ‘Not the liveliest subject, but the only one I know.’
‘What about your past?’ I ask.
‘Oh, that,’ he says, and waves his hand. ‘That,’ he adds, ‘is a different matter.’
His darkened, habitually frowning, puzzling expression turns from the desk, the manuscript and the publisher’s letter to the garden – terraced with rose trees – and the hill beyond. It, the latter, absorbs his attention, something almost artificial in its shape, a tumulus-like construction: it was the hill, he tells me, that sold him on the plot: an aspiration to live on it and, that failing – it belonged to a nearby farmer – to live beside it. ‘And we end up below it,’ he wryly adds.
‘There’s also the war,’ I tell him.
He glances at me as if to enquire, ‘How much do you know of that?’