The Ice Age

by Margaret Drabble

There was nobody in the dimly lit interior, as far as he could see. He wandered down the aisle, glancing into the Chapel of the Crucifix, where an old woman knelt, and up to the Choir of the Seraphs. The figures of stone, of heavenly beauty, seven centuries old, soared above him, pale gold. Impossible not to be moved, by the fact that men had made all this. For an illusion. And the whole life of Crawford revolved around this ancient illusion: its snobberies, its social life, its power, its dismissals, its approvals.

  Len Wincobank, Harry Hyams, Richard Seifert, they were the modern builders. And London’s Centre Point stood as empty as Crawford Cathedral, an anachronism before it had even been occupied.

  Anthony remembered expressing, recently, his admiration of the Chrysler Building to an old friend. A friend from the old high-minded days. And the friend had said, “But how can you admire such buildings? They are built to the glory of commerce.” It had struck Anthony as such an extraordinarily quaint comment that he had worried about it for days: which of them was off the rails?

  Needless to say, the man who had uttered the comment had not himself been a believer. Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty. Well, he hadn’t been far wrong, Ozymandias, he had lost his kingdom, perhaps, but at least part of his monument remained. By their monuments ye shall know them. By the Pyramids, the Parthenon, by Chartres and the Hancock Building, by St. Pancras Station and the Eiffel Tower, by the Post Office Tower and the World Trade Center. All large buildings express both piety and pride: how could they not? Man’s own achievement, they point to the skies. His own gasometer had enmeshed the skies. They witness at once man’s sufficiency and his insufficiency. When the I.D. Property Company’s office block, Imperial House, had been completed, a ceremony of piety had been held, on the rooftop: the last stone was laid by the architect, and there had been champagne—for the foreman, the architect, the three partners in greed, and the borough planner, who had accepted his glass with a nervous laugh. The sun had beat down upon them, on the high roof. On top of their own building, on top of the world. It had been a curious thrill, an impious thrill. Whom had they celebrated up there? Themselves, or the mightier power which had permitted them to play for a while?

  The aisle was cold. A huge ironwork boiler, part of some antiquated heating system, dispensed a little local warmth. Anthony, pacing, reached the aisle which was lit from within, by a small light, to show the depth and richness of the carving. Roses and tendrils of stone curled, intricate, involuted, around a central boss. The undying rose. Craftsmanship, genius. He paused, walked on, watching the changing patterns in the wall. Diamonds, trefoils, toothing, a display of invention, fantasy, fancy—dedicated to what end? Of what had these men thought, as they nagged and whittled and chiseled at the solid blocks? Of the glory of God? It seemed somehow unlikely. Of employment, employer, wages, security of tenure. It had been a long job, the building of Crawford Cathedral. Imperial House had taken only two years. The craftsmen of Crawford had been secure for many decades in their work. Had they too asked for higher wages, boosted inflation by unreasonable demands? A historian would know. He paused again, by a strange little row of knobs of stone. They reminded him of something, some familiar pattern. He stared at them, intently, wondering, his mind empty, except for the fear of thinking about his father. There stood the row of little round knobs, each round but four-sided, each tapering into a funny little peak, as though the stone were not stone but some more liquid substance. What did they remind him of? Nipples? No, something softer, more claylike. He touched one, felt its soft point. And suddenly it came to him: of course. They were like little icing decorations, little peaks, squeezed through a forcing bag and a rosette, onto a cake, a birthday cake, and with the realization, a whole scene, long forgotten, came back whole into his memory: his mother, in the kitchen where he had just half an hour ago left her, but younger, more than thirty years younger, himself a small child, and she skinny like a greyhound, her hair tied back in an orange and red scarf, cherry earrings in her ears, the bobbydazzler, the witch wife, and she had a cake on the table in front of her, his own birthday cake, and she was icing it, and he, a small boy, was watching her, and she was hardly aware of him, she was deep in her own thoughts, and sighing. The white icing squeezed through the little metal nozzle onto the pink cake, steadily, methodically, rose after rose, and his name was written on the middle of the cake, in darker pink. He had wanted pink, had asked for pink, had cried when his brothers told him pink was for girls, and his mother consoled him, and said—even her words came back to him—that pink was a good choice, because it was hard to get hold of anything for decorations, and she had half a bottle of cochineal. Crushed spiders, crushed spiders, his brothers had mocked, and she had driven them away, and he had stood there alone by the table, watching. It was wartime. Weeks of rationed sugar had gone into the icing. The cake was made from an angel food cake mix, sent by a friend in New York. And his mother sighed, as she iced the cake, because of the wartime, and the shortages, and because her husband was away, an army chaplain in the Middle East, and she was left with three boys, and the fear that the Germans would take their revenge and bomb the conspicuous cathedral, which no blackout, no camouflage could conceal. And yet who could leave its symbolic protection? In his memory, his mother sighed again, and spoke. She said, “I always made such lovely cakes, for your brothers. And look at this.” He did not know what she could mean, he thought the cake beautiful, but she went on, “I’ll make it up to you, my sweetie, when the war’s over, I promise I will—” and he remembered that he had felt such a sense of being the chosen one, of being blessed and favored, with untold riches promised to him, and at the same time so bitter a flash of hitherto unexpected deprivation—who were his brothers, that they had had prewar cakes, prewar toys, cream, bananas, grapes, tomatoes? They had been born into the Land of Plenty. But he was the Chosen Son.

  She had not made it up to him when the war was over. Instead, there had been years of whalemeat. And his father had come back, flapping his black gown like an old rook, like a frightening old crow. Interfering, intruding, pecking his way between Anthony and his mother, forming an evil Trinity with his brothers, forcing Anthony from the nest. God, families. He had not given his much thought for years. They had seemed not to matter. He had left, and made his own way, and done things that would displease them, on purpose to displease them, he had acquired a family of his own in Babs and the kids, a second family in Alison and Molly and Jane, the past was past, and well over. And yet. There it all was. A classic case. The spoiled youngest son, the jealous one, trying to outbid, failing, trying again. I have to win, thought Anthony, staring at the stone icing. In whatever terms I must win. I must choose the terms. They must be unmistakable.

  Shivering, he began to make his way back. He could hear an echoing scuffling and a distant talking that preceded lonely evensong, that desolate ritual. He would not stay. He walked toward the leather door, and it came to him that he knew how it was that Alison felt, now, about Jane and Molly. She, Alison, fastidious, perfectionist, had been presented with the impossible. It is impossible in any sense to be a perfect parent, a perfect child. Jealousy, resentment, undying hatreds breed and thicken around an iced cake. Alison had aspired to perfection. How often had he himself heard people say to her, of her, “Oh, Alison is the perfect mother.” But it was impossible. She was right, she could not divide herself in two. She could save Jane, or Molly, but not both. So she had committed herself to saving the one that could not be saved. No wonder poor Jane was embittered. To her, too, it had not been “made up.” There was no way of making up to Jane. A great sorrow for her filled him. He was sorry that he had so disliked her. When she came home, he would make it up to her.

  When he got back to the house, he found his family in a state of some excitement. On his account. It seemed that the phone had not stopped ringing since he had left for the cathedral. First Babs, then Giles Peters, then a man named Huntingdon, then his solicitor. There had been messages about houses, co
ntracts, offers, but nobody had written them down: everyone would ring back. Action, thought Anthony to himself, feeling a familiar pulse beat and a strange lift, despite all, in his damaged heart tissue—and looked round his family and saw that they took it without question that he should have such calls, although they too were slightly fluttered by their frequency and urgency. This is my metier, he thought. His brothers did not think him a fraud: they took him on the terms he had created. He had convinced them.

  He got on to Babs first: listened to condolences about his father, queries about his mother, inquired about Peter’s broken leg, then was told that a firm offer of £35,000 had been made for the house in Notting Hill. It seemed too good to be true, but Babs said it was definite, and could he please come and sort it out, as soon as possible, after the funeral, before the funeral, before the buyer found somewhere he fancied more in this buyer’s market, before more squatters broke in or more cats stank the place out. “I’ve been doing my best to keep an eye on it,” said Babs, plaintively, “but I’m eight months gone, you know, and I’m absolutely whacked.” Eight months gone: he had completely forgotten that Babs was pregnant. Good old Babs: the thought of her having another baby by another man filled him, to his own surprise, with an amused tenderness. He promised he would be down as soon as he could manage it. Perhaps I ought to come to your dad’s funeral, said Babs, after all he did lend us two hundred quid when we really needed it, but it wouldn’t look too good, would it? No, not really, said Anthony, thinking of the dean and the bishop and the choir boys and the clerics: a hugely pregnant Babs would hardly be appropriate. They both laughed. I’ll see you soon, he said, and rang off, and rang Giles, who was engaged, then Rory, who gave him some garbled story about a proposed deal for the Riverside scheme: he was hedging so badly that Anthony got off the phone, tried his solicitor, who was also engaged, then got back to Giles.

  Giles said: you must come down at once. We’ve had an offer, from the council.

  Anthony was not as surprised as he might have been. How quickly one adjusts to a change of fortune. Ever since he had heard that Giles had been on the phone, Len Wincobank’s words had been going through his head: Giles has got a trick or two up his sleeve, Len had said.

  For an hour and a half, Giles tried to explain the complications of the council’s offer, and Anthony tried to take it in. It sounded good, but there were drawbacks: of timing, principally. The sums involved were so complex that not even Giles and Rory, over days with the calculating machine, had been able to come up with anything like final figures, or so Giles said. Anthony, listening, felt himself returning to the ignorant, bewildered, hopeless confusion of his early days in the property business, but at least he knew better than to let Giles realize his confusion. He kept his end up. He had learned a thing or two, and one of the things he had learned was the art of bluffing, that most simple, useful of arts. He asked questions, stalled, mumbled. He even managed to imply, on the basis of his newfound confidence over the £35,000 for the house, that he had a trick or two up his own sleeve. He could hear Giles changing tack: the shift amused him. The conversation ended amiably: if it all pays off, said Giles, we’ll celebrate. What if we only break even? said Anthony. Ah, Jesus, that’ll be worth a celebration too, said Giles, with something like heartfelt sincerity. Anthony was pleased that he had been amiable enough to confess to strain. Perhaps he and Giles could get rid of their stretch of riverbank, and remain solvent, and remain friends after all, though at times it had seemed far, far too much to hope.

  He returned from the hall telephone to the drawing room with a feeling of unseemly optimism. There sat his mother, knitting, his brothers watching an American detective series, like relicts from another, slower world. And his poor father, schoolmaster and clergyman, had slowed down to an eternal standstill. Anthony sat down and tried to calm down, and tried hard to fix his eyes politely upon the implausible antics of the television, but his own life seemed to him inexpressibly more romantic, more dramatic, than any fiction he had ever observed.

  He had of course to stay on for the funeral, even at the risk of losing £35,000 or more; then he had to take the car back to Alison, at West Gonnersall, for she said she was lost without it. We’ll get a second car, when I’ve made our fortune, he promised, on Leeds station, kissing her good-bye. Good luck, she said. You’ll be all right for a few more days on your own, he asked her, and she nodded, and smiled, and said, “I like it, really, you know, I like the house. It’s just that I haven’t been able to tell you so.” He thought it generous of her, to say she couldn’t say.

  On the train, he opened his daily paper and read about North Sea Oil, the black miracle, the Deus Ex Machina. It seemed that Britain might be saved at the last hour. What an unpredictable joke. Would the fortunes of the Imperial Delight Company take the same direction? That also would be a black joke. He wondered what kind of moral ought to be drawn from it. Sermons in stones. The words spoken over his father’s coffin, by the bishop, had been far from original. There was not much help in those old quarters, these days. His mother had shocked him by remarking that the bishop was going dotty—“He’s got a thing about exorcism, the poor old boy,” she had whispered in his ear, over sherry and sandwiches. “I don’t know what’ll happen if he gets any worse, it’s almost impossible to get rid of a bishop, you know.”

  A senile Britain, casting out its ghosts. Or a go-ahead Britain, with oil rig men toasting their mistresses in champagne in the pubs of Aberdeen. And himself where? A man of the past, the present, the future?

  He had a lot to do in London. He had to see his solicitor about the house contract, he had to see Giles, he had to see his accountant, he had to see his doctor, he ought to go and see Babs, and have a look at the old house. But the train would get in too late for business: business would have to wait till the morning. So what, tonight? Giles, the house, Babs? He rang Giles from King’s Cross, but there was no reply, nor was there from Rory, so he took a taxi, on impulse, to the old house that he and Babs had lived in for so long. They had bought it in 1966 for £10,000; it was now, even in a slump, worth nearly four times as much, it seemed. It had been uninhabited for months, ever since Anthony had been taken ill. Babs had said that on her last visit, it looked all right: she had got rid of one lot of squatters for him by the subtle method of suggesting to them a more convenient squat in a more lenient adjacent borough, where the authorities tried hard to accommodate the homeless, but who knows who might have moved in during the last twenty-four hours? The taxi slowed down outside the Victorian terrace: to his alarm, he thought he could see the flickering of a light in one of the front rooms. Perhaps it was only Babs, or the house agent, or the prospective buyer, he told himself firmly, as he noisily inserted the key in the lock, and noisily made his way into the dark hall, hoping that any illicit intruder would have the grace to run off in terror at his approach. But he could, alas, unmistakably hear scuffling, in what had been the living room. Bravely, he shouted, “Hey, who’s there?” but there was no reply, only a kind of strange moan, more disconcerting than any other response he could have imagined. It was dark: the electricity had of course been disconnected, and Anthony, now a nonsmoker, no longer carried lighter or matches. The thought of encountering an ill person in the blackness was not encouraging, but luckily a considerable amount of light fell from the street lamps into the house through the open door and the uncurtained windows, and as his eyes adjusted, he realized that he could see quite well. He pushed open the living room door. On the floor, in a heap of rags and newspapers, covered by an old coat, lay a person. The person was groaning, quietly and rhythmically. It was very cold. Two candles flickered. Bottles stood about.

  “What is it, what’s the matter?” said Anthony, approaching the heap, but he could tell already, from the peculiar quality of the groaning, which he had heard already several times in his life before. It was a woman in labor. Oh Christ, oh Christ, thought Anthony, and I bet the telephone’s been cut off for months. The woman moaned. It di
d not sound too bad yet, not too near the time. He knelt down by her, picked up the candle, tried to see her. What kind of person, tramp, junkie, drop-out, simpleton? There was a bad smell, of spilled drink. He lifted the coat, looked at her face: she was young, a child, pale, spotty, sticky with sweat. She opened an eye at him: rolled drunkenly upward with pain, white, unseeing. “You hang on,” he said, touching her damp cheek, “you just hang on, I’ll get an ambulance.” She moaned, and cried, No, no. “Why not?” he said. “You need to be in hospital.”

  “No, no,” she shrieked, rolling her head from side to side. “No, no, no ambulance. Where’s Bill?” she cried, and then began to groan again.

  “Who’s Bill?” asked Anthony, relieved that he was not alone with his drama. “He went to get somebody,” the girl said, and as she spoke, Anthony heard footsteps, fumbling up the stairs, into the hall, and there was Bill, filthy, tatty, grinning in the half light, pissed out of his mind, useless Bill, he had forgotten what he had gone out for, he collapsed on the floor, grabbed for an empty bottle, fell over, and passed out. That simplified the issue: Anthony went round to his ex-neighbor, rang the police, rang an ambulance, rang Babs, and went back, armed with a flashlight, to wait. His ex-neighbor, a graphics designer, came with him, and Anthony accepted from him the first cigarette he had smoked for months: down went the smoke into his lungs and up into his head, and it was so unpleasant and overpowering that he put it out after three inhalations. The girl groaned, and Bill revived, sat up, started to ramble on about the police and how they mustn’t get him, but Anthony had taken an intense dislike to Bill and handed him over to the first copper that arrived. Bill was too far gone to resist, and allowed himself to be hauled off like a sandbag. Anthony felt no remorse at all; he hoped he got what was coming to him. But the girl, that was another matter. The ambulance was slower than the police, and while they waited the graphics designer tried to apologize for letting people into Anthony’s house, which Anthony found excessively polite of him, and the girl managed, between moans, to mumble abuse about that bugger Bill, who had walked out on her, and how she never wanted to set eyes on the bleeder again. Anthony was glad that she was not a middle-class drop-out, eager to embark on a discussion of property rights and the rights of squatters; indeed, when she had established Anthony’s identity, she even said she was sorry if she’d made a mess of his house, but it was that fucking cold out, and they’d been hosed out of their last squat, and anyway, look at the state she was in now, she really couldn’t help it. Anthony found himself holding her hand. She hung on to it grimly, squeezing with astonishing force during contractions. Anthony and the graphics man found themselves timing the contractions, as each had done for their respective wives, and praying that the ambulance would get a move on. In the odd moment or two of lull, they exchanged news, unreal news, about the prospective buyer (architect, said the graphics man, whose wife was a friend of Babs), about property prices, about Anthony’s heart and the graphics man’s recent acute peritonitis. It struck them both, as they talked, that it was not really very surprising that young girls were reduced to having babies on other people’s uncarpeted floors, for how could anyone without a wealthy father or an enormous income ever afford to buy a floor of his own, these days?