by Melvyn Bragg
To Joe, often weak-headed, easily recruited by manly marching bands as a child, a hungry audience for choirs, for drama on film or on the stage, this new drumbeat was the gut call of his generation, and to ignore it would be to miss out on its siren promises; of sinless pleasure, harmless excess, anarchy without effort. Natasha stood apart from all this as did her friends in Kew Gardens. They were as unruffled as Joe was ruffled. Outwardly, still the checked sports jacket, the regular job, the obedient day; outwardly a balanced conformist. Inwardly, increasingly an appetite for what was new which longed to be sated. To be in and of this time, his time, which called him into its rhythm. Not to answer would be to miss the uniqueness of his generation. It involved no surrender. No decadence. Nothing more in fact than appearances, a few clothes.
So here he was, in the King’s Road, having walked the length of it trying not to look too lingeringly at the erotically charged underdressed girls, plucking up the courage to go into one of those clothes shops which bore so little resembalance to the rationed clothes shops of his youth. The sight and sound and smell of sex infested the city. Even shops were now, in this golden summer mid-afternoon, places of dark seductive disco dance-floor lights and the latest permissive hits from the charts, of crushed velvets and lace, brothels of dream garments.
He spun it out. He wandered from window to window, gazing at what were more costumes than clothes, disguises promising metamorphosis, a man could be made again merely by stepping through the door. It was as if in the sun-struck windows of the King’s Road, Chelsea, London, England, a rebellion had announced itself and all you had to do to join in was to purchase one of the new non-uniform uniforms.
Did he see himself as freed from his past and unshackled, released into the air by changing in a cubicle? He could appear to change personality. He could become lawless. Perhaps the multiple opportunities of the metropolis demanded multi-personalities to meet and take up its challenges. That it might tempt him to invent a new, uprooted, liberated identity might also have stirred somewhere in his mind. But where would that take him? The apprehension which held him back would turn out, in retrospect, to be well founded. He ought to have averted his eyes.
There was something feverish about it, akin to the feelings he experienced in the Buckingham Club or when he became possessed by one of the new nerve-injecting pop songs; an atmosphere which called up impulses hitherto unknown or unacknowledged and produced a sensual and disturbing suffusion in his mind, a sensation without need of words, a freedom to change that dared him and stared him in the face. He had to enter. He knew he ought to walk away. This freedom had come too late for him. Married, treading softly into the thickets of middle-class England, with a child and a wife to support, mortgaged, with a steady job, with a pension, on the ladder, on the up. But there they were, the gears of change, respecting neither his conditioning nor his achievements nor his ordained ambition nor all the company of cautions. Did he realise that crossing this threshold would be his first infidelity?
Sam and Ellen sat together in the pub kitchen after closing hours, after the helpers had left, the last cup of tea, the last dip into the novel for Sam, for Ellen the last daydream in front of the fire as she sat on the low stool, almost the last time this scene would be played out in this place.
Sam folded down a page, put aside The Quiet American and said,
‘For one last time now, are you sure?’
‘Certain.’ She did not turn to him but gave the word to the fire, like a quiet oath.
‘Remember when you came back after she’d just been born?’
‘I do.’
‘Well.’
‘I thought it would be seen as interfering if we’d moved down then,’ said Ellen, still not turning to him, ‘it would seem that I didn’t trust her. Natasha would have thought that.’
‘She’s turned out a good mother, hasn’t she? When I’ve seen them.’
‘Yes . . . yes . . . though she talks to her like a grown-up all the time. She’ll explain things that I’m not sure a little girl can understand. Things that don’t need explaining. They just need to be told – “That’s wrong,” “That’s dangerous” – but it’s her way. It’s Natasha’s way.’
Sam’s admiration for Natasha’s patient explanations was unqualified. This, he thought, was the proper way to bring up a child, to pour in wisdom as early as possible, to take time to teach, to have nothing to do with the abrupt, imperious, unchallengeable cuffs and curt diktats of his own childhood and, to some extent, that of Joe.
‘Proof of the pudding,’ he said.
‘Oh yes! She’s lovely, isn’t she? She’s just lovely. There’s nobody like her.’ And now she turned to him and smiled deeply as images of her granddaughter came into her mind.
‘So why now?’
‘I’ve tried to tell you, Sam.’
Ellen’s reply was an appeal. Sam heard it.
‘Reading’s just about an hour to London on the train,’ he said.
‘How far is the pub from the station?’
‘There’s a bus at the top of the road. Or you could walk. Either way fifteen or twenty minutes and then there’s the tube at the other end.’
‘An hour and a half, two hours at most.’
‘At the very outside.’
Ellen had shown little interest in either the pub he had been offered or the district in which it was located. Sam was not piqued by this. She had come back from her latest visit to Kew Gardens utterly resolved and he had loved her for the steel in it. She had to be near them, she said, the sooner the better.
His landlord contacts had taken him to Reading. His qualifications, the account books he had taken and the references from the Cumbrian brewery’s manager who recognised a mind made up, had struck lucky with the imminent availability of a run-down Victorian pub, the Builder’s Arms.
It was in a very working-class area of Reading, he had told Ellen, who had nodded with relief: she did not want to go out of her league. Rows and rows of small terraced houses, more like the North than the South, he said, all going down to the Kennet which ran into the Thames. The rivers marked two of its boundaries and cut it off from the city of Reading itself: many of the residents of the area rarely went into Reading. Small shops galore, a place sufficient to itself and quite prosperous, with many of the women working in the big biscuit factory which loomed, like a castle, above the huddled terraces. He even mentioned the gasometers at the bottom of the street. In time he would become very fond of their perfect cylindrical shapes, the sinking and rising of their surfaces.
‘It tickles me,’ he said, ‘that it’s so old-fashioned down there.’ He smiled, still taken with the discovery. ‘You expect the South to be ahead of us, but it’s like Wigton in the forties. It’s quaint. There’s still a Ladies’ Only Snug. They come in, big women, half a porter, nicer people you could not meet. It needs a bit of work, but that’s to be expected.’
‘I’ve made up my mind not to miss Wigton at all,’ Ellen said, ‘otherwise I won’t manage.’
‘They have a ladies’ darts team,’ said Sam, ‘the landlady has to captain it.’
‘You’d better start giving me lessons,’ she said.
‘They’re decent people, Ellen,’ he said. ‘A lot like here.’
Joe had taken Charles, his agent, to the train. He walked back from the station under pinpoint-clear stars. He wished he could read them, although the wish was not strong enough for him to make the effort. His mother could do it but he had been too impatient to stand and be taught by her. Their presence was enough; the unknown sometimes being more attractive, he thought; perhaps to know would be to lose some of the provoking mystery; or so he reasoned in the euphoria of the evening. The late heat was always felt as a privilege by those from the North, a siren call from the warmer, easier South. The cigarette tasted good. The two or three glasses of wine over dinner sat comfortably, the taste and scent still a perfume, not yet a drug.
He had taken Charles to the train after a supper
with five of their Kew friends that had gone exceptionally well. Charles, Joe had guessed, thought Kew a suburb in mind and class as well as location, but Anna’s husband Harry had proved to be at Cambridge at the same time as Charles and off they had romped in the happy pursuit of mutual acquaintances. Claire had then confessed, during a conversation about the war in Vietnam, that her father had been a captain at Arnhem and won the Military Cross, which again reassured Charles. Joe watched Charles closely, wanting to impress this rather reserved upper-class stranger who had taken his career by the collar.
On the way to the station he had told Charles about Natasha’s novel; he had told Charles about Natasha; he had told Charles too much and his conscience now twinged but it was only a twinge and the bigger fact was that Charles had been genuinely intrigued by her. Natasha, he said, was ‘quite simply the most intelligent woman I have ever met’. Joe had taken that totally at face value and practically exploded with pride.
She was, wasn’t she? She is.
And beautiful, he thought, as he meandered back home under the silvery moon.
He was so very lucky, he thought, and regressed to adolescence when he used to make so many lists. He ticked off his blessings.
There was Natasha; there was their daughter; there was enough money to live the life they wanted; there were friends, friends in Kew, friends at the BBC, friends from Oxford, friends back in Wigton, Natasha’s friends in France; he liked his job; his novel had been accepted; he was English, in London in the middle of this young new noise. Oh, lucky man! Oh, Lucky Jim, he remembered, how we envy him.
As he reached the front door, what could well be the last aeroplane of the night whistled and screeched its way across the suburb, almost directly over his house. There were fewer at weekends, when the air controllers shared out the pain across West London and there were times like this when to look up was to see magic in the great bellied flying machine, lit up like a village. That was not without gain. And sky travel was the life of his time, the globe a mere journey, the heavens reached up to. So many lives to be lived was the reality of the bold and lucky ones in his generation.
He paused at the gate and let his proprietorial gaze sweep down the trim semi-detached avenue as if appraising Versailles. He thought of the wine – three bottles, and only half a bottle of the Yugoslav Riesling left. He thought of the pâté bought by Natasha, the French cheeses and the real coffee. He lit another cigarette and looked up at the universe as if inviting it to look down on him and administer a little pat on the shoulder. This was Living in Style! Who would have believed it?
Natasha had been too exhausted to go upstairs and so she gathered her strength in her usual armchair before the empty fireplace. Joseph came in glowing and immediately she felt better.
‘There’s a bit of wine left,’ he said, ‘want some?’
She shook her head. Joseph poured himself a full glass and took his usual seat opposite her.
‘What did you think of Charles?’
‘Oh, Joseph, I’m tired.’ His disappointed expression made her rally. ‘I think he has beautiful manners and he likes your work and he likes you and that is quite enough for a first encounter.’
‘He was funny when he talked about Angus Wilson, wasn’t he?’
‘But don’t you like Angus Wilson? Such Darling Dodos, you made me read it.’
‘Yes. But he was funny about him.’
‘He was funny against him. English humour is sometimes funny only to the funny English, Joseph. It can seem rather cruel to the rest of us. I was surprised at you.’
‘Why?’ Normally he would have felt a little dented by her disapproval but tonight he was on Cloud Nine.
‘Well. Angus Wilson is a novelist you admire and so why do you like stories which show him in a bad light? You are not English as Charles is English. That cast of humour is not your cast. You were imitating him.’
‘If you’re saying he’s a snob I couldn’t disagree more.’
‘Of course he is a snob. Harmlessly and charmingly. And he is confident in a world to which you come as a stranger. Stay a stranger, Joseph. It has great advantages. Stay outside. Sometimes you sound as if you want to be an initiate.’
‘No I don’t!’
She raised her right hand, as if to say ‘pax’. His benevolence untroubled, Joseph took across a cigarette and kissed her on the forehead.
‘That was really tremendous,’ he said, ‘the meal. The pâté. The wine. The – everything. Do you think it went well?’
‘Of course.’ He always wanted much more. She had found the formal dinner party rather a strain.
‘Claire was a turn-up, wasn’t she?’
‘Claire is lovely. You make calf’s eyes at Claire, Joseph!’
‘I don’t.’ He did.
‘You do. But it is you. You fall a little in love with everybody you like. Now it is Ross; now it is Charles; now it is Claire. It is an aspect of your character, Joseph, though sometimes I think it is a sort of giddiness like getting drunk too quickly on a few glasses.’ She paused and looked at him with a tender seriousness. ‘It is as if you need somebody all the time to be the fresh ground for your feelings, always somebody new and receptive and sometimes you become a little dependent on them for a while in the process, as with Ross.’
Joseph recognised, reluctantly, that there was truth in this but his wine-fuelled mood would not let him pause or answer: self-examination, never at that stage in his life a rigorous practice, was certainly not an option on such a night.
‘You were wonderful,’ he said, ‘Charles said so. Charles said you were the cleverest woman he had ever met.’
Joseph decided he might as well finish the bottle: there was barely a glass left in it.
‘Charles knows how to flatter. And by saying that he was flattering not me but you.’
‘He meant it.’
‘Of course.’
‘I told him how great your novel was, is.’
‘Joseph!’
Her annoyance was expressed and then withdrawn. He could be such a boy! Look at that ridiculous crushed-velvet suit.
‘I pressume he told you he liked your silly suit.’
‘As a matter of fact . . .’
‘Why did you spend the money on clothes? You have never given me a satisfactory explanation. You were never interested in clothes. I thought you would buy books. Why did it all go on clothes? And not just for yourself!’
‘She likes it.’
‘It’s dreadful!’
‘She loves it. Especially the little gun. “Bang! Bang!” she says, “you’re dead.”’
‘Why on earth did you buy her a cowboy suit?’
Because as a boy I’d always wanted one and there was no chance. Because I knew she’d love it and she does. Because it says ‘Wigton’ and not ‘Kew Gardens’, it says ‘Daft’ and not ‘Tasteful’, it says ‘fun’ and not ‘fine’.
‘I couldn’t think of anything else,’ he said.
‘You haven’t dared wear any of your new clothes for work yet.’
‘I will.’ He made the decision. ‘On Monday. This suit. Want a bet?’
‘You don’t have to finish the wine, Joseph.’
He looked. More than half a glass left. His head was becoming the first turn of the carousel. He put the glass down.
She waited until he was steady and then said,
‘You were so funny tonight, Joseph, when you talked about the Irish Horse Dealers in Wigton and mimicked them and then brought in James Joyce. It was very clever. We all loved it.’
‘Even Charles?’
‘Oh, Joseph. Especially Charles.’
‘And did you? Did you?’
He beamed a drunken beam and she smiled.
When Joseph had gone to bed, she let the exhaustion overwhelm her like a swoon.
A small group from the laboratory had driven from Brittany to Provence for François’s funeral. Among them was Sylvestre, the boatman with whom François had gone out most weekdays to look f
or specimens. Sylvestre, late middle-aged, a salt-and-sun-worn face, broad-shouldered, was uneasy in his black suit but well used to funerals.
With some skill he had manoeuvred Natasha apart from the others after the funeral, after the food and the wine.
He held out a nondescript box.
‘I want you to have this, Miss Natasha,’ he said. ‘It’s not much. It’s shells. Plenty of the really little ones, the ones you can hardly ever find. They take a lot of digging out. François used to look out for them on the beaches we went to. He would hunt for them for so long sometimes that he came back blue with cold. He loved doing that.’ He looked around. This had to be private. ‘They’re all washed and clean. Some of them are so small it was my wife who had to hold them to wash. She loved him too, Miss Natasha. We all did, you know. We want you to have them.’
It had taken Natasha some time to find a big enough jar, clear, solid, like the jars on the shelves of old-fashioned chemists. The shells filled the jar almost to the brim. At the top were the rather obvious ones, bleached beige-coloured, many tones of sand; below, those fugitive minute infinitely delicate little shells, so many shades of pale pink, a treasure, a wonder not broken.
She had put the jar on the oak chest between the two candlesticks. She could look at it for hours on end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘I looked at Chris still asleep,’ Natasha had written in her novel, ‘death, I thought, gives you a taste for death, while life does not necessarily keep its grip on you. Love – and I looked again at the face of this man whom I had known for a bare six weeks and who slept so near – love does not necessarily have a hold on you either, provided you do not fear the absence of it.’
But I am beginning to think that I do fear its absence. Natasha sat back from the old typewriter and lit another cigarette. I do fear the absence of it, or rather the absence of Joseph which has become the same thing. I still do not fully understand how it all began with Joseph, with such a stranger. Was it an exhausted surrender? He took me over. Was there a moment? Moments? When was it clinched? Was it by him or by me? After Robert, did I merely see him as the receptacle into which I could pour myself and be safe?