A Pure Clear Light

by Madeleine St John

  ‘Dresses?’

  ‘Yes, dresses.

  ’ ‘Fancy your noticing the way she dresses!’ Flora had stopped laughing, or even smiling. What could this mean?

  Simon scented the danger and rushed to avert it. ‘I wouldn’t notice,’ he said, ‘if she didn’t simply demand one’s attention every time you see her. Oh God. Those bits and pieces.’

  ‘I always think Lydia looks very nice,’ said Flora, whose own taste ran to French jeans and plain white T-shirts, and things from the Harvey Nick’s sales for more formal occasions; ‘for a woman of her age.’

  ‘Miaow!’ cried Simon, and they both laughed. One thing which cemented their relationship was that gin always put them in a good humour; so generally they drank some every evening.

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ said Simon.

  ‘What is?’ said Flora.

  ‘Well, her age. I mean, Lydia: it was one thing when one first knew her; fair enough; loose cogs—you expect them when they’re in their twenties, early thirties. Missed the first bus, but there’ll still be a few more; but now, ten years or so later—well: precious few buses. Probably none. Probably missed the last one. And there she still is loose-cogging around the scene, just getting in the way—it’s embarrassing.’

  Flora was appalled. ‘Well, really!’ she exclaimed. ‘How—’

  ‘And then she has to make a meal of it,’ said Simon, ‘with all those jumble-sale outfits. And that itty-bitty flat of hers. And she always wants a lift. She’s just so pointless. ’

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Flora.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Mother,’ said Flora. ‘Of God.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Honestly, Simon. If you could hear yourself. The cruelty. That poor woman. What has she ever done to you?’

  Simon had been recalled, unexpectedly, to sobriety. He considered the question. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘She just depresses me.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Flora. ‘Yes. I see. Yes. Make me another drink, will you? There’s just time for another before we eat.’ She watched while Simon made the drink. Lydia was sometimes a bit of a downer, that was a fact; but she couldn’t quite tell why. Oh, Mother of God: pray for us sinners.

  5

  When Flora had got herself married, and then Claire, and then Louisa—well, it rather left Lydia out in the cold, one could say: not that she seemed to care. Well, to be sure, it was—then—early days yet: it was a bit early for caring. But still: they (and Alison Brooke, who had vanished to New York, and who therefore did not in the same way thereafter count) had all been friends together, and it was a bit tricky, in so far as they still were, to keep Lydia in the frame when she had no husband or other partner. It was not such a fag while she was still youngish, and attractive—ish! said Simon—but it got trickier by the year. And now she was forty-ish, and it required a certain breadth of vision even to pose the question of whether or not she was, still, attractive. Ish!

  ‘Attractive? Lydia? You must be joking!’ said Simon.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Robert, husband to Louisa. ‘She’s not bad, is she?’

  ‘If you go for that style of thing,’ amended Alex, husband to Claire.

  ‘Lydia is beautiful,’ said little Thomas. ‘I love Lydia.’

  ‘Lydia has lovely clothes,’ said Nell. ‘She gets them from jumble sales. Can we go to a jumble sale, Mum?’

  ‘Lydia is pathetic,’ said Janey. ‘Please don’t ask her to come with us to France, Mum. She’ll ruin everything.’

  ‘How unkind you are,’ said Flora. ‘How do you mean, pathetic?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Janey. ‘She just is. She tries too hard.’ People often did, with Janey, for she had a critical mien, but it was not a bit of use; it was indeed the worst thing one could possibly do. Janey was one very tough young woman.

  Five years ago, when Thomas was a tiny baby, just home from the hospital, and Simon had had to go away on location for six weeks, Lydia had come to stay, because with Nell having been but four years old—although Janey was eight and reasonably self-sufficient— it was all a bit much for the rather flighty au pair: and Lydia had been—providentially, for the Beaufort household— between (as she so often, after all, was) jobs.

  ‘But she’s been absolutely wonderful,’ cried Flora. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without her.’

  Simon was always in an illish temper when he got back from one of these away-assignments, little new baby or no little new baby—‘See how much fatter he is since Daddy went away! Who’s my fat little boy? Who’s my little fatty? Who’s Mummy’s little darling? Who’s this? This is your daddy—yes, Daddy—smile for Daddy!’

  Simon took the child and cuddled him, awkwardly at first and then with more aplomb, and said, over the baby’s downy head, ‘But really, Flora, she doesn’t need to stay here any longer, does she, now that I’m back? I’d have thought she’d have been off out of the place by the time I fetched up—not installed in that kitchen with the girls making meringues as if she bloody lived here. When does she mean to go?’

  The baby was becoming restless and Flora took him back. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She’ll go soon, I expect. As soon as she gets the vibe you’re giving out. Just carry on, Simon. Make her feel unwanted. I’ll lay odds we’ll see her calling for a taxi by suppertime.’

  Simon ignored the irony in these remarks and simply asserted that he would be more than happy to take Lydia home himself. ‘Where’s she actually living these days?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Maida Vale-ish,’ said Flora vaguely. ‘You know.’ She had never actually been there.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Simon, ‘but I mean to find out.’ He turned to leave the room.

  ‘If you say even one word,’ said Flora, ‘to make her feel de trop I shall never have anything more to do with you.’

  He was half out of the door but he turned back to face her. ‘Now, would I do that?’ he said.

  He went down to the kitchen, where Lydia and the eight-year-old Janey (looking fairly tough already) and the four-year-old Nell, all dressed in striped aprons, were sitting contemplating the meringues, all set out on a wire rack.

  ‘We’re waiting for them to get cold,’ squeaked Nell. ‘Then we’re going to put whipped cream inside them, and then we’re going to eat them!’

  ‘I say,’ said Simon. ‘It’s an orgy.’

  ‘What’s an orgy?’

  He caught Lydia’s dark brown (almost black) eye. ‘It’s a feast of pleasure,’ he said drily.

  ‘We’re not going to eat them all,’ said Janey very seriously. ‘We’re going to have one each. The rest are for pudding tonight.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Simon. Lydia stood up.

  ‘Gabriella should be back any minute now,’ she told him. ‘There’s a casserole in the oven for supper—she’ll do the rest. So when we’ve finished this meringue business I’ll begin making my way—as long as you don’t need me for anything more here. I was actually just about to go up and sort this out with Flora when you came in. I’ll go and do that now. See you in a minute, girls!’ She left the room.

  Oh God, thought Simon, she couldn’t have overheard anything, could she? Surely not—they’d been two floors away. ‘She’s in the nursery!’ he called out to her, as Lydia went up the stairs.

  She returned ten minutes later. She looked perfectly happy. No, she couldn’t possibly have overheard us, Simon assured himself. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘that’s all fixed. Simon, Flora told me that I must ask you if you’d mind taking me home—but for my part I must say that I wouldn’t dream of troubling you; I can get a taxi easily.’

  ‘We won’t hear of it,’ said Simon. ‘My pleasure. When did you want to leave?’

  ‘Well, Flora insisted on my staying for supper,’ said Lydia. ‘So after that, whenever you like. I’ll just go and pack up, anyway— we’ll do the meringues after that, girlies, okay? See you in a bit.’ And she went off again. And then Gabriella turned up,
and the evening program proceeded on its way, until, finally, the moment arrived for Simon to take Lydia home to Maida Vale.

  6

  It wasn’t what Simon would have called Maida Vale, but what the hell, here in any event they were, in a battered little street near the canal. ‘Hmmm,’ said Simon, looking up at the peeling façades of a terrace of ungentrified stucco-fronted houses; ‘interesting neighbourhood. I don’t believe I’ve ever been in this part of the world before.’

  And if I have anything to do with it, Lydia’s glance seemed to say, you won’t again. ‘Oh, really?’ she said, in the surprised tone of one to whom the remark might have been uttered in, say, Gloucester Road. ‘Well, never mind. You’re here now. Thank you so much for the lift. I do hope you’ll be able to find your way out again without too much trouble.’ She’d had to give him directions towards the end.

  ‘Oh, no problem, no problem,’ said Simon. ‘But look, you must let me give you a hand with that suitcase. Didn’t you say you lived on the top floor?’ The offer was purely a formality; the idea of entering the house was entirely unsympathetic: even fearsome. That peeling paint; God knew what rot might be found within.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Lydia. ‘How very kind.’

  Simon, flabbergasted, picked up the suitcase and followed Lydia—who was carrying two bulging plastic bags—through the front door and up the uncarpeted stairs.

  It seemed clean enough, even sound enough; the landings were free of refuse, needles, rats, and worse; there were no disgusting esoteric odours. It was a case of arrested decline rather than outright decay. They reached the top floor, and Lydia did the business with the mortice lock and at last opened her front door. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Do come in.’ He could hardly refuse; filled with a new dread, he entered Lydia’s flat.

  Lydia had darted across the room on to which the front door immediately opened and turned on a desk lamp, and Simon, still carrying the suitcase, beheld a sitting room with three arched windows which overlooked the street. He put the suitcase down and glanced around at the shabby furniture, the haphazard decor. ‘So this is where you live,’ he said pointlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ Lydia agreed.

  She folded her arms and looked at him; she seemed to be smiling, half at him (at him, not with him) and half to herself: a smile which seemed challenging, ironical, mysterious, and almost— had it not suddenly vanished—infuriating. Who the hell are you, he might almost have said, to smile at me like that?

  ‘Let me offer you a drink before you go,’ she said, and she turned before he could refuse and looked inside a Victorian sideboard affair. ‘I’m sure I’ve got something here, somewhere.’ He stood there, helpless, while she rattled bottles, and then she stood up, holding one aloft. ‘How about this?’ she said.

  It was a bottle of green Chartreuse. Well, what else should it have been? ‘Just a very small one,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’ She poured out two liqueur glasses full and handed him one. ‘Do sit down,’ she said, nodding towards the sofa. It was very faded and threadbare, and was draped with a large silk-fringed shawl. Simon sat down at one end, but Lydia remained standing by the sideboard. It was hard to tell in this half-light, but she seemed to be staring at him—not rudely, but certainly, frankly, staring.

  ‘Won’t you join me?’ he said, inclining his head towards the other end of the sofa. She said nothing but crossed the room and sat down.

  He hadn’t quite noticed before how well she moved: she had a firm, rhythmical tread, and when she sat, her frame folded, just so, her back very straight. Where could she have learned to do all that? She moved—now he came to think of it; now that he’d actually watched her, properly, for the first time in all these years of intermittent brief meetings—like one of those old-time actresses. Deportment. A nice old-fashioned word for a nice old-fashioned thing. She sipped at the drink. There was something just right about the way she did that, too. Who, now he came to think of it (he must once have been told, but he hadn’t actually been listening), was she? Who are you, Lydia?

  ‘Have you lived here long?’ he said, looking around the room again. Shabby didn’t begin to say it: the curtains, for instance, were half in tatters, and the large Aubusson-style carpet on the floor was virtually threadbare—here and there you could just discern a rose-petal or two, the end of a blue riband, half a spray of foliage.

  Lydia considered. ‘I bought it three and a half years ago,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you own it then.’

  ‘Yes. My mother had one of her fits of conscience, and gave me the money.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘One of these days she may have another such fit, and I’ll be able to do it up properly.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He has no conscience.’

  ‘Your mother—’ ‘Lives in Australia. She ran off with an abstract expressionist when I was fourteen years old.’

  Simon began to laugh, and then stopped. ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘Your father, then—’

  ‘My father’s remarried and has another family; they all live in Bucks. I was my parents’ only child. Now you know everything there is to know about me: I need only add that art is long and life is short—as I dare say you have already realised.’ Her glance fell on him briefly, teasingly, dismissively. Now you can go, she might have said: and he was for the moment paralysed; he did not know how, politely, gracefully, to make a move. It was as if she had heard his unspoken question and had teasingly, then dismissively, answered it—but only to leave him wondering still further. Yes, but who are you?

  He looked into his glass and then drained it and put it down on the low table in front of the sofa. ‘I really must be going,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the Chartreuse.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks for the lift, and everything.’

  He was standing up. It had all taken an almost superhuman effort; she rose in one swift, easy movement, like a bird taking flight, and walked over to the door and opened it. She stood, waiting for him to follow her and depart, her head slightly tilted. That smile again. He stood in the doorway, not twelve inches from her. She was almost as tall as he—much taller than Flora: her eyes almost directly met his. ‘Well, goodbye,’ he said. And, oh God, for one terrible instant he was seized by the impulse to lean forward and kiss her on the mouth; to extinguish that smile, subdue that teasing, alien glance. How could this be? He stopped himself just in time, of course.

  But there was worse. For as he turned to go, finally, truly to depart, he saw that she had seen this impulse come and go, and thought as little of him for having resisted it as she would have thought of him for succumbing to it. He hastened down the stairs almost at a run, and escaped the terrible house. He did not see her again for another six months or so, and, when he did, had all but forgotten that dreadful moment in the doorway: but looking at her at the other end of a dinner table—at the Carringtons’, was it?—he thought, she’s not my type at all, not remotely. Could she be anyone’s?

  7

  Apparently not. Apparently no one wanted to hook up with Lydia. ‘But how old exactly is she now? Thirty-five-ish?’ Simon asked Flora, on the way home from that particular dinner party.

  Flora was driving; Simon had been knocking back the pinot noir like no one’s business. ‘She’s, well, a bit older than I am,’ said Flora. ‘She came up late to Cambridge: she went out to Australia for a few years after she left school.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Simon. He made no mention of his having heard the tale of Lydia’s errant mother. You’d have thought his interest in the subject was nil. Well, and so it was.

  ‘Her mother lives out there,’ Flora went on. ‘She has a gallery. In Sydney.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Simon. Flora glanced at him. Well! It was, after all, he who had raised the topic of Lydia. ‘Isn’t it time old Lydia found herself a bloke?’ he’d said, a
s they were driving along the embankment. ‘She isn’t old,’ Flora had replied.

  Simon thought, for one last moment, of Lydia: there was only one way to find out who she was, and he wasn’t going to do so. He didn’t even want to. Would anyone?

  8

  ‘All the same,’ said Flora, ‘I think I should ask her to come to France with us.’

  ‘Please, Mum, don’t,’ said Janey. ‘Please.

  ’ ‘She can sleep in my room,’ said Nell. ‘She can come with me.’

  ‘Can Fergus come too?’ asked Thomas. ‘Can we ask Fergus to come to France with us? Fergus can sleep with me.’

  ‘You won’t even have room for her,’ said Simon. A futile discussion ensued about the number and disposition of the beds and bedrooms at the gîte; ‘I mean in the car, anyway. It’ll be a squash as it is.’

  ‘It would have been even squashier if you’d been coming,’ said Flora.

  ‘The whole advantage of my not coming,’ said Simon, ‘is that you won’t be squashed in the car. Just think about it.’

  ‘Can Fergus come?’ Thomas asked again. ‘Fergus won’t squash.’

  ‘She probably can’t come anyway,’ said Flora. ‘She probably has too much to do here, at this time of the year.’

  ‘Sure to,’ said Simon. ‘Leave her to get on with it.’

  Lydia with advancing years and a receding economy had become unemployable, so had had perforce to employ herself: she was now the sole proprietor—and, indeed, employee—of Floating World Postcards Ltd, and had been trading, latterly at a small profit, for almost three years. The postcards depicted London in its more insolite aspects (she resorted to a small stable of freelance photographers, followers of E. Atget and A. Monnier and that ilk) and were gradually finding their way into the collections of the better class of tourist. ‘I’ll give her a ring, anyway,’ said Flora weakly.

  ‘Please don’t ask her to come to France, Mum,’ said Janey. ‘I do implore you.’