by Caro Fraser
But Leo just smiled up at her, not rising to the bait. There were so many of these sighing, sweet, half-chiding remarks. They had been going on for years.
‘I think I’ll clear some of the stuff out of my old room,’ he said.
‘I wish you would. I don’t think it’s been touched since you went to university,’ replied Maeve. ‘You’d be doing me a good turn if you’d get rid of some of it, give me some more cupboard space.’ She shrugged her shoulders into her coat. ‘Mind and show me what you’re throwing out, though,’ she added.
Leo took the tea tray through to the kitchen and stood looking out over the little net curtain strung across the window above the sink. It was a new piece of net, he realised, not the pattern of lacy swans through which he had seen so many dawns and dusks as a child. Of course it was new. She must have changed it countless times over the years. Still, he had expected to see the swans.
He thought suddenly of the other members of chambers, and of the different ways in which they would all be passing the day. Roderick on his Boxing Day shoot at his splendid place in the country, Sir Basil with his sister and her family, the famously dimwitted Edward included, the rest in middle-class affluence. None of them washing up the teacups in the tiny scullery of a terraced house, looking out onto a grimy back garden and rows of other houses. Except Anthony, perhaps. Only he and Anthony came from the same sorts of beginnings.
From Anthony, his thoughts moved inevitably and unwillingly to Rachel. Upstairs in his suitcase was the present she had given him before he left London. It was a book about Fauve paintings, published by the Yale University Press. She must have gone to some trouble to find it. It must have been that conversation they had had about André Derain, about whether his work was political or merely cultural. That she should remember that fleeting conversation, that she should find him such an apparently impersonal gift, yet one implying such intimacy of ideas and understanding, both touched and troubled him. He had opened the gift at a service station on his way to Wales, and had sat with it in his hands, feeling its slender weight as another small burden in their relationship.
Leo was not accustomed to giving and receiving presents. He would have to buy her something when he got back to London. Or would he? A book was a small enough thing, but he knew how much love and thought lay behind it. These tokens, these slender threads that pulled people closer and closer …
And there was no doubt, too, that the tone of their relationship had altered since the night of Sir Basil’s party. For Rachel, the enchantment and frivolity had been replaced by something deeper and more serious. Leo could feel this. It was as though she felt charged with some mission, as though Leo’s sexuality were within her keeping, her responsibility. Each act of love between them seemed like a commitment to some unspoken future. Yet Rachel did not realise, did not know, that there was to be no future.
I do not want to think about any of this, Leo told himself. He rinsed the cups and plates and put them on the draining board, then went upstairs to the little back room which had been his as a child. He no longer slept there when he came to visit his mother. Now he slept in the guest room, the larger, airy room on the other side of the landing.
The room was much as it had been when he first left home, apart from a few extra boxes and bags of remnants which his mother had stacked by the bed. The bed itself looked slight and forlorn, denuded of its covers, the red-striped mattress thin and shabby. There were still some RAF squadron stickers from a comic pasted to the cheap wooden headboard. A narrow wardrobe stood in one corner, next to it a chest of drawers, and by the bed a little cabinet, its varnish chipped.
Leo began to fish through drawers and boxes, trawling through the debris of his childhood and adolescence. Some of it amused him, some of it saddened him. At length, from beneath the bed he pulled out three cardboard boxes containing lecture notes and essays from university and Bar School. He could not remember having brought these back to Wales, and wondered why he had. He thumbed through a thick slab of revenue law notes, noting how rapid and compressed his writing had been then, the blue of the fountain-pen ink faded upon the yellowing paper. It was more haphazard and arrogant these days. Then, he had been too consumed by ambition to be arrogant. Revenue law, thought Leo, marvelling at all the forgotten industry – he didn’t know the first thing about it any more. So much for learning. Well, these notes could go, for a start. To think he had once imagined that they might one day come in useful.
He stacked them behind the door and pulled a fourth box from beneath the bed. He recognised the spines of some of the books protruding from it, and for a moment his hand hesitated, about to push the box back. But instead he pulled the books out and glanced at their titles. They were play scripts, thin little volumes with shiny, frayed covers. Rattigan, Shakespeare, Shaw … I could have been an actor, and not a barrister, mused Leo. And what would life have been like, then? He remembered playing Viola in Twelfth Night, remembered the peculiar pleasure with which he had dressed as a girl, then as a girl disguised as a boy.
He blushed now at the recollection of his conceit. He picked up the script and glanced through it, the annotations, the underlinings, the little directions to himself. Then he put it back in the box and picked up a copy of The Rivals. He knew what he would find within its pages. He slid it out between his fingers and stared at it, feeling something rise and catch in his throat, some emotion long suppressed. The pose in the head-and-shoulders photograph struck him as quaintly dated now – the slightly rumpled lock of blonde hair falling over the brow, the open shirt neck, the full mouth and the Dirk Bogarde stare. But it was still Christopher, and he was still beautiful.
What a transition that had been, from the school drama group to the sophistication of the Cambridge Dramatic Society. He had first seen Christopher in their production of The Rivals, and then in A Man for All Seasons – which part had he played? The King? Not a big part, but he had been, for Leo, quite marvellous. Leo smiled to himself and turned the pages of the text. He had been the prompt; all the cues were marked in ink. He remembered sitting there in the wings, the musty wooden smell rising from the floorboards, sounds and light turned away from him in sideways projection, so that one felt adrift, cut off, not part of the cast, nor of the audience …
He had only seen him once after that, some years after their brief affair had ended, when he was playing Tommy in Entertainmg Mr Sloane in an out-of-town rep, strutting his way through the part, blonde, beautiful and androgynous. But seeing him had only opened up the deep wound again, and Leo had been glad, thereafter, that Christopher did not become famous – not even remotely well known. He was spared that much. The memory of that first love made his heart ache, literally, with its pathos, its quality of irreclaimability. Where was Christopher now? And where would I be, wondered Leo, if Christopher had not taken me and changed me for ever? Who would I be?
He was about to slip the photograph into his pocket, then changed his mind and put it back into the pages of the book, which he returned to the box. That was all past. He had borne the little pain of looking on Christopher’s face once again, and he did not wish to keep it with him.
In the bottom of the wardrobe he found old Kodak wallets stuffed with photographs, some from his teenage years, some from university. More of Christopher – but these, taken with groups of friends, far-off images in fields or on picnics, in pub gardens or by the river, had none of the tender intentness of that other picture. Smiling, Leo pulled out a few which included himself to show to Rachel. She was always asking him what he had been like when he was younger. These might amuse her. He quite liked the idea of her pleasure, her laughter. He stared at his own youthful image for a moment. He could scarcely remember what it had been like to look in the mirror and see a dark-haired reflection.
Sighing, he put the handful of photographs on the worn carpet next to him. He was about to stuff the others back into the wardrobe when, from the back of one of the packets, there fell out a larger photograph, black and
white, a head-and-shoulders portrait of a man in uniform. He recognised it as his father – not from recollection, for he had no memory of what his father had looked like, but from the fact that he was very like Leo. A younger, softer Leo, the face slightly longer – Leo had his mother’s square jaw – but the same eyes, the same brow and mouth. He must have found the picture as a boy and decided to keep it for himself with his other possessions. He could not recollect doing so, nor the impulse that had led him to it. It struck him as odd to think how many pieces of one’s past – gestures, impulses, words, emotions – lay buried and obliterated. How many people one could be in a lifetime. He looked back at the photo. And where was his father now? Dead, perhaps. No, Maeve would have said. Perhaps she knew where he was. But Leo had no desire to see his father now. In Leo’s mind he was merely a ghost, and Leo did not wish to conjure him up. He, too, could stay in the past.
He put the rest of the photographs back and closed the wardrobe door. Straightening up, rubbing the cramp from his thighs, Leo glanced up and saw, on top of the wardrobe, his old record player. God, what a priceless possession that had been. He remembered the Christmas when his mother had given it to him. He had been sixteen. She must have saved up religiously in the Co-op Christmas Club. He stretched up and pulled it down by its plastic handle. It was one of those record players that folded up like a boxy little suitcase. He flipped up the rusty snap fasteners, his thumbs stroking the grainy beige plastic of the lid, and opened it. How flimsy and pathetic the plastic stylus looked – even its very shape was a breath of the sixties. The sight of it brought back days of his adolescence with a rush of familiarity that was almost heady in its potency. Where were his records?
He got up again and stepped back, craning his neck to peer at the top of the wardrobe, where he could see the edge of another cardboard box. He fetched a chair and brought the box down. For another half-hour he sat on the bed, going through his records, reading sleeve notes, rediscovering his forgotten self. The Everly Brothers, Elvis, Lesley Gore … Then, when he had left university, the Stones, Cream, Hendrix, the Beatles, Papa John Creach … There were tapes, too, compilation tapes he must have made at some time in his twenties, though he could now no longer remember doing so. But there was his handwriting, bold and young and obsessed with the music of his times, listing the contents of each tape carefully on its back and front. That had been before he discovered that tastes for opera and classical music were more positive social assets. How much he had discarded of his old self, and how ruthlessly. And for what? He went through the tapes slowly, marvelling, and put one aside with his photographs.
He had heard the front door slam a while ago when his mother came in, but it was nearly eight by the time he had put everything away, snapped off the light and closed the door on his past. He went down to the little sitting room, where his mother was knitting and watching a repeat of Fawlty Towers.
‘Oh, good,’ said Leo, and settled down in an armchair in the darkened room. His mother always watched television with the lights off; she said it helped you to see better, and she could knit without even glancing at the needles.
‘It’s nearly finished,’ remarked his mother. ‘I would have called you when it came on, but I thought you must be enjoying yourself up there.’
Leo watched the closing exchanges between John Cleese and Prunella Scales with regret. He rarely watched television in London. Either he was busy, or working – anyway, it seemed rather a lonely thing to do, and not part of the self which he had constructed in London.
‘Switch it off,’ added his mother. ‘There’s only the news on, and I don’t want that.’ She knitted, then said, ‘I haven’t made you any supper because I didn’t think you’d fancy much after a big lunch.’
‘I’ll make some cheese on toast later,’ said Leo, turning off the television and switching on a lamp in the corner of the room. He sat back down and there was companionable silence for a moment or two, broken only by the tapping of his mother’s needles as she worked.
‘So,’ she said, coming to the end of a row and turning her knitting, ‘how much did you find to throw away?’
‘Not a lot,’ replied Leo. ‘Well, that is, all my stuff from university can go – notes and things. I’ve put those boxes on the bed. And I can’t think why you’ve kept half of those clothes. I don’t think even the jumble sales would want them now.’
‘Oh, well … you know …’ murmured his mother. The firelight danced and glinted against the spectacles.
‘I found some interesting bits and pieces, though. And some photos.’ Leo got up and fetched them from the sideboard, where he had put them earlier. He brought them over to his mother’s chair. She took them from him, laying down her knitting and preparing herself with pleasure. She loved old photographs. Leo crouched beside her and they went through them together with little absorbed murmurs.
‘Oh, weren’t we all thin, then? … That’s that Llewellyn girl – been married three times, would you believe it?’
A pause.
‘There you are at my graduation. I remember thinking how young and pretty you looked. I was very proud of you.’
‘Cer i chwarae! Mind, that was a nice hat … Yes.’
‘Oh God, look at the length of my trousers. You made me buy that suit. I hated it.’
‘A very nice suit. You look very nice … Now, what became of that boy? I remember his mother, lived over at the Rhydoul …’
They came at last to the picture of Leo’s father, which Leo had left in deliberately. Maeve stared at it impassively, critically. ‘I remember this picture,’ she said at last, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He had it taken before we were married. Where did you find it?’
‘With my things. I must have pinched it from a drawer when I was little, and kept it. I don’t remember.’
Maeve nodded her head as she looked at the photograph. ‘You were always asking after your dad. Always wanting to know things about him.’
‘And what did you tell me?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ Maeve glanced at him in surprise. Leo straightened up and went to sit down in the armchair. He shook his head. ‘Well, you were very young, I suppose. You never asked much when you got older. It wasn’t much that I used to tell you. Same as what I would tell you now, I suppose. He was a decent man, in his way. Always meant well. Just couldn’t fix on one thing for long. Not a job, not his family.’ She stared at the fire, her mind in the past. ‘Mind, he was clever. Oh, a great turn of speech, a great talker.’ She glanced at Leo. ‘So you come by that honestly.’ She looked back at the picture. ‘But a born philanderer. It was a temptation, I suppose, with those looks. He was so young when we married. Chwarae teg.’
‘You sound as though you don’t blame him,’ said Leo quietly, his chin resting on one hand.
Maeve gave an uncertain little grimace. ‘Can’t say as I do. Not now. I did at the time, though.’ There was a silence. ‘He broke my heart for me.’
Leo had a sudden memory of sitting on the hearthrug in that very room, when he was seven or so, his football cards spread out in front of him, his mother standing in the bay of the window, watching the street, waiting, waiting. Was that the time when he had never come back? Or was it just a random recollection?
Maeve glanced over at him and gave a wry smile. ‘No doubt you’ve broken a few in your time.’
Leo smiled back at her. ‘I shouldn’t like to think so,’ he replied. In the past, he had often thought of telling her – telling her what? That he would not marry, that there were to be no sweet little grandchildren for her, no fuss to be made, no christenings, no photos, no birthdays. But where was the point in telling her? Just let life roll on. Everyone had their own disappointments. That was what came of too many expectations. Maeve knew that.
‘I have to be getting back tomorrow,’ he said, gathering the photos together.
Maeve nodded. ‘Well, it was good to see you. I was thinking, though, that next year I might get over to see Clare and her family
at Ruthin. I haven’t seen your cousins for a while now, and they’ve all got families. I should like to go. And this is a long way for you to come. The roads are bad at this time of year.’
He appreciated the little excuses she laid out for him. She would rather be in Ruthin with family, he knew. These Christmas visits were labours of love on both sides.
‘That’s true,’ he replied. There was a pause. ‘I could always pop up for a couple of days in summer, when work eases off. I’m hoping I won’t be quite so busy next year.’ He thought for a moment of telling her of his application to take silk, but his feelings about this were now so blackened with pessimism that he did not wish to tempt fate. ‘Or you could come down to London for a week or two. You’d like it, you know. I’ve always told you.’
Maeve wished he would not make this offer; she found the business of declining gracefully rather difficult. She had no wish to visit her son in London. She had stayed once overnight on her way to Devon to visit her brother, and she had not been comfortable. In London her son became a creature she could not fathom. She was proud of him and his success, but she did not understand his world. She detected changes in his accent and manner which lent him a falseness she did not wish to witness. She remembered the first time she had been aware of the changes in him, when he had graduated from King’s and she had met all his university friends. Just like his father, she had thought, longing to be after the finer, brighter air of other worlds, new faces, connections, opportunities. That he ever came back to North Wales at all she took as a token of love for herself, and nothing else.
‘Well, we’ll see,’ she said easily, and rose from her chair. ‘Let’s do something about that cheese on toast.’
The next day Leo set off early, when the sky was raw and grey. He felt unaccountably depressed at the thought of the next few months. He thought of Rachel, and of the present he ought to take her, and on an inspiration he turned off at Llangollen and headed out through the grey-green countryside towards Llyn Mawr. When he stopped outside Nell’s cottage it had an air of blankness, of dereliction, that made him think she might no longer be there. He hadn’t been in touch for three years. Why should she still be there? But there was a fastness, a solidity about Nell that made him think she would not have moved.