Alan doesn’t even notice when Vic leaves. Vic makes his way through the crowd, which will soon be washed out onto the footpaths with the cigarette butts when the pub shuts at six, and pauses at the door, the figure of Alan (and it occurs to him now that he can’t recall his surname, if he ever knew it) in the distance, propped up against the bar, staring down into his pot. He lets the door snap shut.
On the street, walking back to the station, the beer hits him. He was having one pot. Just enough. From the moment Alan had spoken his name though, Vic knew he had no choice but to listen to the story and its details that came slowly, through the late afternoon, every detail delaying his departure.
The afternoon a dreamy blur of recurring words and collapsed time, Vic now sits with his head back against the leather seat of the old red rattler, vaguely aware of a whistled birdsong calling through the haze.
In the kitchen, Rita is rocking the baby back and forth in a pram. Michael. She chose the name for the simple fact that she liked it. It is the name, she thinks, of someone who quietly goes his own way. Self-assured. Yes, that’s what she wants. Someone who moves through the world but doesn’t let the world get to them. Someone who can stand back. Yes, Michael.
And she rocks the pram, but as much as Michael should be sleeping, he isn’t. His eyes are wide open and they’re watching her. And as much as this should be a moment of contentment, it isn’t. Already the sun is low and Vic should have been home hours ago. And she knows why he isn’t. He’s at The Railway. As much as he said he wouldn’t be, he is. And she is angry, and her anger will speak when he returns. For he has been at The Railway with Paddy Ryan and all the others who call themselves mates when he should be here. Will this always be the way of things?
She doesn’t know how long she’s been mulling over this — and mulling is the word. But when she looks back to Michael, he is asleep. How long had her hand been rocking the pram? Long enough. Eyes closed. He’s asleep. A life just waiting to be lived. That will go its own way. Just where and how she has no idea.
And the weight that she once felt in her belly, the weight that she carried around with her and which made her walk with the flat feet of a duck, has now become a different kind of weight. And this is not a weight that she can carry by herself. This is the weight that never goes, for this is the weight of responsibility. Which is why she is angry, and why her anger will speak when Vic returns.
For the moment though, as Sam, the artist she has never met, prepares for his first night at sea, as Katherine sits the dutiful servant that is her body down inside her tent, as George works at his desk, the basement world of ink and smoke awaiting him, as Webster contemplates his half-completed domain, and as Vic makes uncertain progress along the street towards her, contemplating the fate that may have been his, Rita rocks the pram back and forth, back and forth. Inside the pram, behind eyes closed to the activities of the world around him, Michael now dozes — Michael, who is simultaneously sleeping in the kitchen, and in the crib of an air-conditioned TGV, speeding through quaint villages and green countryside that are both worlds removed from the one Michael and his kind will soon assume.
But Rita’s anger does not rest, for anger sleeps badly. And as Vic approaches the front door and she hears, and notes with a sinking heart, the heaviness of his steps, the anger that does not rest and which sleeps badly trembles and itches, the pram moving back and forth, back and forth, until it stops when Vic enters the room, and the words that have waited too long to be heard (a pattern that will recur again and again over the years) thunder into life.
Part Five
1949
41.
The Lost Domain
These are the doors they walked through, but through which they will not walk any more. It is a late Victorian reflection for a late Victorian moment; a melancholy thought on a crisp winter’s day, the sun low in the sky and the shadows long across the street outside the park nearby through which she will stroll later to her tram stop. She had been sitting at her desk, getting on with her work. Then George had walked through the door, the very door that she had told herself only a few years ago that she would remember as the door they all walked through, that miraculous assembly of artists that has now scattered to various parts of the world. And as much as any one of them may well walk through that door again, it will not be the same them, nor the same city, for that matter. For the city has moved on.
George is sitting opposite Tess’s desk in the gallery. He’s come to interview her for the magazine he edits. He’s lost that undergraduate look, she remarks to herself, and is fuller in the face, which she attributes to family life, for George is married now, with a daughter. Even this becomes a measure of change, by which she really means loss. For there will always be a part of Tess that wanted, and continues to want, the impossible.
He’s come to interview her because her gallery is now famous, not just in this city but throughout the entire country. And it’s famous because of those war years when she brought together that assembly of artists. It is becoming, George tells her, a sort of institution. And it was his use of the word ‘institution’ that prompted that late Victorian response, one of those moments of Tennysonian longing to which she succumbs from time to time. For if her gallery is now seen as an institution or on the way to becoming one, so too is she. But George is unaware of this implication as he poses the first of his questions.
‘You must,’ he says, as he opens his notepad, ‘be feeling quite satisfied.’
She doesn’t reply at first. She looks about the gallery, abstracted, suggesting that she is giving the question deep consideration. In fact, she’s not thinking about the question at all. She’s still thinking about his use of the word ‘institution’. If her gallery is an institution, so too is she. And when did this happen? For if she is synonymous with the gallery and no longer simply thought of as Tess, what does that make her?
And it is then that the word ‘dame’ comes to mind, quickly followed by ‘grande’, then capitalised as ‘Grande Dame’, and she realises that this is her fate. That if she has not already become such a figure, she is on the way to becoming one. Or, at least, this must be the way people are beginning to see her. Like those Grandes Dames of the nineteenth century, with their salons and their followers, who launch careers the way royalty launches ships, and who are sought after not because they are themselves but because they have become institutions. Is this her fate? It’s a disturbing thought because she is too young to be an institution. In fact, she will always be too young to be an institution. Will always be too young to be old, even when she is. But, clearly, those who see her like this don’t think of her as too young. Or even as young or old. For an institution, by definition, is ageless. And what of friends? If you have acquired the capacity to launch careers the way royalty launches ships, then what of friends? Who are they? And this question is accompanied by the speculation that George, sitting opposite her and waiting patiently for an answer to his question may well be a friend of sorts. One of those who were there when she was just Tess and had not become synonymous with her gallery. For they meet regularly at functions and openings, and when they do, and they talk, there is an unstated but shared assumption of belonging to a separate society from those around them. The society of those who were there and who are now joined by that common experience. But outside of the small circle of her husband and daughter, who, she asks herself, do you look to when you become an institution?
More than this, that brief Tennysonian moment tells her that she is no longer the woman who fell in love in that last winter of the war only four years ago. Not in the eyes of those who would pronounce her an institution, for institutions are bloodless, their passions long extinguished. And would Sam see her like this now? Not just distant and removed, not just someone from the past, but formalised, transformed into something beyond past, present and future — and beyond earthly, everyday living. Sort of above it all. That’s what an institution is.
But she doesn’t s
ay any of this, after the ten or so seconds it has taken to gaze about the gallery and contemplate not the question but the tolling bell of the word ‘institution’.
‘Yes,’ she finally answers, ‘there is satisfaction in this. But not complacency. We’ve got a long way to travel, as a country, I mean. It’s no wonder our artists leave as soon as they can. The wonder is that they ever come back.’ She says this knowing that it will look and sound good, for the emerging institution of Tess knows, and has always known, what is required of such questions. And, of course, there is satisfaction in all that has been accomplished. And she is, and always was, never one to be complacent. And so they pass the next hour, George posing questions and Tess finding answers that, if not quite right, are not wrong either.
And when the photographer arrives she is aware of adopting the attitudes and expressions of what is called a ‘public face’. Even as the private Tess dwells upon and contemplates the door and all the doors through which they will not walk again, that miraculous assembly, she inwardly remarks that she is wearing what they call a public face and that it is this face she is showing the camera, as though her fate is already determined and all the life will be drained from her and she will become the institution that society demands. Ageless and above earthly living. As she feels the weight of this inevitability slowly falling upon her, she knows that the struggle will be to retain the memory of that lost domain of the last winter of the war and the younger Tess who yearned for the impossible, before the impossible bowed to the inevitable.
As George departs the gallery with the photographer, his farewell is that of someone who was there. Someone in whose company she can recognise the shared society of the lost domain. But the photographer, a young woman (unusual, Tess remarks to herself, but confirmation that the war has changed everything) looks at Tess through the eyes of someone who was not there. Through the eyes of someone who has just photographed and who only sees the public face of her subject. And this, Tess concludes, as she watches them exit the gallery door, is the way institutions are not so much born as called into being.
42.
Care and Dread
Skinner studies Miss Carroll’s tent. Had he noticed her in the last few days? It is a question he has pondered for two or three minutes now, possibly more. He keeps an eye on Miss Carroll’s tent, and it is no longer the possibility of company or comfort that causes him to do so, but a sense of care. Even duty. And the sense of dread that is never far from it. To care for someone or something, he reasons (whether rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter), is to accept the anxiety for whatever may be their fate, even to feel responsible for it. And it is because Skinner cares about Miss Carroll that he feels a sense of dread when he asks himself if he has noticed her in the last few days. In short, did he care but not enough? For these are cold days, the very dead of winter, ice over the puddles and winds with the snow on them. And Miss Carroll is looking old now and the tent that she calls home (no sleep-out yet) is wearing thinner by the year.
But Skinner, too, is older, and his memory not so reliable any more. And Miss Carroll is now such a fixed figure on the landscape of this small community that it might be possible, he speculates, to notice her and not remark upon it, and, therefore, not remember if you have, in fact, seen her in the last few days.
It is because of this uncertainty, and because Miss Carroll has always been guarded about her privacy, that he decides, for the best of intentions, not to intrude upon her. He has no doubt, he assures himself, that if he were to approach her tent or even to enter it, he would find her sitting up in bed, reading a book to while away a cold day. And, furthermore, annoyed at the interruption, however well intended. And so, with this thought, he decides to wait. He takes his care, and the dread that shadows it, and walks back towards the milking shed.
The next morning he is looking for her. Not noticing her and then forgetting that he has, but deliberately looking for her. And she’s not there. Not to be seen, at least. And that fire upon which she cooks her meals has an abandoned look. But still he waits until he is sure that the time has passed when she should have been visible — gathering firewood, coming to him for water, or, with that old string shopping bag, walking along the dirt road to the grocer’s and the butcher’s. And so, with one part of him still reassuring himself that it is an unnecessary visit and the other part convinced that it is not, the leaning figure of Skinner crosses his paddock to Miss Carroll’s tent.
At first he stands on the dirt track that will soon become a street, reluctant to enter her property, and looks for signs of movement or sounds of activity. But seeing and hearing none, he calls out.
There is no response. The tent is still and silent.
‘Hello Miss Carroll. Are you there?’
Again, there is no response. And so he steps off the street and on to her land, walking cautiously towards her tent. As he nears it he notices that the lamp, the lamp upon which he had dwelt night after night, is on low and his heart leaps. It’s all right. She is reading. Too absorbed in her reading to hear, or too immersed in it to care. And so it is with a light, not a heavy, heart that he pulls back the flap of the tent and speaks. ‘Hello there.’
But from the moment he speaks, and from the moment he looks around, he knows there will be no response and that the dread that shadows care was not misplaced. And, for a time, he cannot move his arms or legs, he simply stands at the entrance, staring in silent comprehension.
There is, indeed, a book beside the bed, and the lamp, though low, throws out enough light for reading, but Miss Carroll’s eyes are closed. Eyes that he knows, at a glance, will no longer perform the wonder of reading. Her hands are clasping, in what he can tell is a firm grip, her rosary. And her face is uplifted as though having just looked up at the crucifix above the bed, which may very well be the last thing that her eyes rested upon, the last image that her eyes conveyed to her brain for it to name, before the eyes closed and the mind of Miss Carroll slipped away from them all.
There, before him, is the lamp and there is the company that he sought. And because it doesn’t seem right that the lamp should continue without her, for the lamp, indeed, had only ever shone for Miss Carroll, the only comfort or companion she had ever sought, Skinner finally finds the strength to step into the tent, registering as he does the faint smell of death in the air (faint, perhaps, because the inside of the tent is as cold as the grave), and turn off the lamp. Its function in life has ceased with Miss Carroll. And although Skinner has seen death before — both his parents, who had died in quick succession in their bed (and the animals that died on the farm or were put out of their misery by a single shot) — he knows that death will always remain beyond thinking. Something for which he, at least, has no words. Words that matter, that is. Better silence. And even now, after turning off her lamp for the last time, he is thinking only in terms of facts: dead, tent, lamp off, dark.
Outside the tent, in the clean, cold winter light, it is the same bright morning that was there before he stepped into the tent. The sun is at the same point in the pale sky, the trees still stand stark against it, and even the birds are still perched on the same leafless branches. The whole business took no more than a minute, possibly two. Nothing has changed except that now the dead body of Miss Carroll, still clutching her rosary, lies no more than a few feet away. Nothing has changed but this. And as he stands, his eyes adjusting to the light, his mind adjusting to the sudden lack of Miss Carroll in the world, all hint of the affable Skinner drains from his features. The next step decides itself. For without thinking, it seems, his legs are moving towards the new doctor’s rooms, on the main road, not so far from Miss Carroll’s tent and Skinner’s Farm, over paddocks and open fields that are already being subdivided and sold off and which will soon become unrecognisable.
And as he walks there is guilt in his steps, for he is telling himself that he should have been looking, that he has been negligent in his care, and that had he gone to Miss Carroll’s tent sooner, he m
ay well have found her alive. She could have been taken to a hospital and a few more years could have been added to the dates that will now bracket her life. A few more years in which she may well have seen the sense in company and allowed it into her life. He has been negligent in his care. He cared, yes. But not enough. And it is this thought that shadows him as he walks on towards the new doctor’s rooms. That and the puzzle of who on earth to contact.
43.
The Centre of Things
All those years that he dreamt of being elsewhere finally brought him here, to these streets and green parks that immediately felt familiar. And, of course, he’d seen it all before in books and paintings and photographs. Only now he knew what lay beyond the frame, beyond the uniform rows of terraces and the bombed-out blocks where the most fantastic gardens had bloomed all summer. And as much as everybody tells him he should have seen London before the war, he’d rather be seeing it now. For Sam this is the most exciting of times. Here. Right now. A war won. And victory in nobody’s faces. The past blown to bits (including the London that everybody tells him he should have seen) and something new and unknown on the way that could be anything. Even that first winter when he’d arrived two years before, which everyone spoke of (in a manner that suggested to Sam that they said this of every winter) as the worst they could remember, was exciting. And the grim faces in the streets, awash with the kind of tiredness that is beyond a good night’s sleep, the kind of tiredness that comes to stay and never leaves, even that was exciting. The grime over everything, the fogs, the whole clapped-out city. It was wonderful. Thrilling. The most wonderful time to be alive. To be at the heart of things, to attend the funeral of the old ways and to watch a new government take over the parliament and the spivs take over the streets. Couldn’t be better. Not for Sam. For this is what he calls a ‘moment’. Not an everyday moment, but an historical one. Post-war. But only just. The dust only just settled and nobody quite sure what to do with themselves. One minute all hopeful, the next still jittery and too tired for hope. One minute lost in the fog, the next stepping into the warm sunshine of this bright new world and hearing the faint, distinctive and reassuring pock of a cricket bat hitting a red leather ball into a peaceful, clear blue sky.
Spirit of Progress Page 21