Late in the Day

by Tessa Hadley

  In the street things were better. She gulped down the tarry, tainted city air, felt the heat of the car engines on her legs and the paving stones hard under her feet, took in the shopfronts one after another in all their vivid detail: the bolts of African fabrics, rows of bottles of coloured varnish in the nail parlour, jars of vermilion peppers lined up on the shelves of the Polish delicatessen. All this was a relief: the impersonal solid forms of the world which would persist without Zachary, without happiness, without her.

  — I fucked someone really unsuitable, Grace confessed to Isobel on the bus.

  — Who?

  — This dirty guy, Dan, friend of a friend, met him at a party. By the time we got back to his place I’d sobered up and I didn’t even fancy him, but I couldn’t be arsed by then, going all the way home. Guess where Alex found me when he came to tell me? Isn’t that glorious? Heard the news of my dad’s death in the bed of a dirty guy I didn’t even want to fuck.

  Isobel didn’t falter, the whole of her composure was dedicated to sustaining Grace, balancing her thoughts, making them all right – though she did wonder how many passengers on the bus were listening. — When you say dirty . . .

  — I don’t mean dirty sex. The sex wasn’t anything special, as far as I can remember. I mean actual dirt, actually on his body. He smelled like he hadn’t washed for a while.

  — In time you’ll come to see it’s funny.

  — Oh yes, hilarious. Don’t ever tell Sandy, will you?

  — I don’t tell Sandy anything.

  — I don’t want him to know that I’m so gross.

  — You’re not gross, you’re the least gross person I’ve ever known. You’re just – Isobel cast around for the right word – an adventurer. Everything you do is like an explorer, venturing into new territory. I wish I was more like you. I wish I wasn’t so cautious.

  Tears squeezed from under Grace’s eyelids as she turned away to stare out of the bus window; she looked desperate. — Does Sandy know? she persisted. — I mean, does he know about Dad? Has anyone told him? Is he still seeing that Italian girl?

  Isobel said that her mother had called Sandy; he might be coming round that evening. As far as she knew the thing with the Italian was off. — Do you think he’ll come? Grace said. — Why don’t we phone him to make sure?

  — If he can come, he’ll be there.

  Isobel understood that Grace was opening up this well-worn old story – of her long-time, devouring, unslaked passion for Sandy, Isobel’s half-brother – mostly as a distraction from thinking about her father. When they arrived at the flat Grace went around exclaiming over everything that was new – Isobel had painted the kitchen, bought an Ercol sofa on eBay. The little flat wasn’t really anything special – the ceilings were low and the kitchen an awkward galley shape – but the way Isobel had things arranged was airy and tranquil. The sofa which was her spare bed was heaped with pretty cushions. Grace opened up the fridge – packed with vegetables from the farmers’ market – and then the wardrobe, as if she were searching for something. Isobel loved buying clothes but her taste was cautious, she dressed in skirts and cardigans and flat shoes. Grace wore vintage or scruffy combats or dramatic satin, changing her look often, as if her appearance were a perpetual art show.

  — Everything’s so calm here. Flowers for the table. It’s calming me, she said, touching the petals of the blue scabious. — It’s such a change after my grotty student life.

  — Too calm, Isobel said. — I could do with a man, messing things up.

  — A dirty man.

  — A really dirty one. Gracie, are you actually going to make a mask?

  — Is it too weird? It’s macabre, isn’t it? I’m going to look up death masks on your laptop.

  — Be careful, please be careful. You don’t know what you’ll see.

  Isobel hovered anxiously, looking over Grace’s shoulder while she found some actual masks – Oliver Cromwell’s, and Pascal’s – and then some funeral directors’ websites, and then a photograph from the end of the nineteenth century of a death mask being made, in some place that looked almost like a barber’s shop. The living men’s own faces, in the lovely silvery old print, were distinctive and mournful, exalted in their dedication to their work. — You see, Grace said. — It’s quite a beautiful process. It’s solemn.

  Isobel hesitated still. — But I don’t think you could do it though, not to your own father. I think it has to be impersonal.

  — Strange, isn’t it, to think that these men are long, long dead too: the mask-takers? The photograph is a kind of death mask in itself. I could take a photograph of Dad, I suppose. A photograph of him, dead. That would be easier. It wouldn’t drive my mother so berserk. I could take it on my phone. Then show it to the dirty guys at parties, see if it creeps them out. Hey fellas, think you can live up to this?

  — Pretty creepy.

  Isobel made tea in the kitchen and when she came out carrying two mugs, Grace had dumped the cushions on the floor and was lying on the sofa with her back turned, face to the wall. Putting down the tea, Isobel slipped off her shoes and lay behind her. She knew that her friend had her eyes open, staring at nothing. When she touched her she seemed to feel a blockage in her turned back, between her shoulder blades, like a dam; some force that ought to be flowing through Grace couldn’t escape and was building up inside. Isobel massaged her gently, trying to conjure away the pain.

  Before they began to eat that evening, Alex again poured glasses of the Stará myslivecká vodka which had been Zachary’s favourite, and spoke briefly. Christine stared at her plate, the others followed Alex with their eyes, willing him to find words for what had happened. He said that Zachary was a man who knew how to do everything the right way, and now he was gone, so they had to do this clumsily without him, as best they could. Zachary had loved art, art that wasn’t stupid or spurious. He’d been exceptional in his insight, and he’d had a singular vision, with the remarkable Garret’s Lane gallery at its centre, of an art radically open to its community. — But for us, Alex said, — his family and close friends, gathered round this table, the loss is so much more, we can’t even begin to measure it. I would be inclined personally to take his death as yet more evidence of the supreme shitty law of life that takes away the best and lifts up the worst. Yet somehow because it’s Zachary, he won’t let me do that. I keep on feeling his resistance, and his force for good, and his belief in it. And yet I don’t know how I’m feeling it, because he’s gone.

  Isobel covered her face with her napkin to cry, Sandy wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Lydia touched Alex’s arm in appreciation, briefly she buried her face against his shirt – though when she looked up again her eyes were still dry, watchful and glittering. Hannah from the gallery was with them that evening too, and Zachary’s younger brother Max, and Nathan Kearney, Zachary and Alex’s old friend from university days. The presence among them of Max and Grace felt uncanny, because they both looked so like Zachary: with his rosy high colouring and wiry black hair, his bright red mouth and big voice, his air of benevolence and force. Max even ate greedily like his brother, pushing his bread in his mouth while he helped himself to salad; and recently he had grown a stiff beard like Zachary’s, a prophet’s strong beard – although in fact Max didn’t have his brother’s determination; he was anxiously touchy, not decisive.

  They all ate something of the lasagne on their plates, they were actually hungry. The noise of their forks scraping against the china and their glasses chiming was like familiar life returning to their circle, however bruised and subdued, and they began to talk. Nathan Kearney, who’d known them all forever – he reviewed films and was sometimes on telly – was usually unstoppable, but couldn’t speak about Zachary. He bent his big head low over his plate, lank hair hanging down like a curtain, concealing his expression, and could only join in with the talk when they were safely on the dry ground of art and politics.

  Lydia pushed the rest of her food aside.

  — You ha
ve to eat, Alex said, concerned and gentle. He had been round to her place earlier, to pick up a change of clothes and her wash things.

  — I know I do. I’ll eat tomorrow.

  He put his arm around Lydia, pulling her close, managing his lasagne with his other hand, waving his fork around when he spoke. Christine was grateful to him, for taking charge of the occasion. Grace had done something extraordinary while she was away at Isobel’s: she had chopped off all her thick curls – in mourning for Zachary, she said – so that the silky under-hair was exposed, curled close to her skull, like a shorn lamb’s. Isobel defended Grace’s action stoutly, said it was a beautiful idea. — Anyway, I couldn’t stop her.

  Lydia said drily that it didn’t look too bad. — Luckily her head is a good shape.

  Now Grace was questioning Sandy about his music, flirting feverishly with hot spots of red in her cheeks, embarrassing him because he was so sorry for her. He was shocked out of his usual charmed self-belief by what had happened, and by her naked head. He didn’t want to be holding forth, at that moment, about his own successes; his glance kept slipping away from her uneasily, he laughed self-deprecatingly as she tried to draw him out. Grace was too much for Sandy. He was fond of her but wrong-footed by her crush on him, because she wasn’t his type: he thought of her as an honorary boy, masculine in her assertiveness, and preferred women who were polished and self-possessed. Sandy’s own good looks were sinuous and sulky, evasive as if he were keeping something back – perhaps for when he was on stage. He was in a band, they were big. Sandy was famous. It was only in his own family that he wasn’t treated with adulation, as a star.

  After Sandy had gone, Grace’s animation sank to nothing. Lydia called for her in a plaintive voice and patted a place beside her on the sofa, then Grace lay with her head in her mother’s lap. Someone turned on the television news. — I don’t know if I can bear to watch this, Christine said, but she stayed, standing up by the door as if she was on her way out. Alex always watched the news; there was this cold anger ready in him, leaping up to meet whatever new outrage presented itself. They saw footage of events at Calais, where desperate migrants who wanted to enter the UK were trying to board lorries or break into the tunnels under cover of darkness; one man lay spread-eagled on top of a train. Watching this scalded Christine, the horror of that inky starfish shape, dark against the darkness – who was he, what became of him? – mingled in her awareness with her own suffering. Yet she knew it was indecent to make any connection between their private loss and this public shame. Their world was privileged even in its grieving; there wasn’t any moral meaning to Zachary’s death, it wasn’t an injustice. And yet it undid them all.

  It seemed airless in their bedroom while Christine undressed; she pushed the Velux skylight open to its furthest extent and the hot night rolled in from outside, tainted and gritty. She was tensely aware of the others sleeping or not sleeping below her in the crowded flat: Lydia in the spare room, Max on the sofa. The girls had gone back to Isobel’s in a cab. Alex had wanted to put Max on the pull-out bed in Christine’s studio, he’d been surprised to find the door locked. She’d shaken her head at him when he asked if she knew where the key was. — Just put him on the sofa in the front.

  She and Alex lay side by side in bed in the dark like effigies, on their backs in their nightclothes, with their legs stretched out and their feet sticking up, staring up at nothing, not touching – yet she felt the heat of his skin, scorching hers. Sleep seemed very remote. — Was it strange to be in their home? she asked. — When you went round for Lydia’s clothes. Zachary’s things must have been lying round everywhere.

  Lydia and Zachary lived in converted parish rooms attached to the chapel which was now an art gallery. Christine had envied them the austere high ceilings and high arched windows of imperfect greenish glass, the old tiles and brass tap in the kitchen, the stylish ultra-modern conversion. She and Alex couldn’t have afforded to live anywhere so distinguished.

  — I was preoccupied, Alex said, — finding all the bits and pieces Lydia asked for. Then there were voices outside and without thinking I was so sure that it was Zachary coming home. Until I remembered that it couldn’t be.

  She felt for his hand which lay between them on the sheet, he grasped hers strongly in his hot dry grip. They didn’t often hold hands. Christine wasn’t easily demonstrative; Alex thought that holding hands was for children, not for men touching women. They didn’t often talk, for that matter – not any longer – with this confessional closeness. Christine felt sometimes as though the long years of their familiarity had grown across her throat like a membrane, so that she couldn’t easily speak to him, and kept herself hidden. Now, though, they must be kind to each other at all costs. — You did well driving up to Glasgow to tell Grace, she said. — That was a good thing to do.

  — What was Lydia thinking!

  She whispered to him to be careful, Lydia might hear them, she was only downstairs. Alex lowered his voice hoarsely. — To imagine giving her daughter the news so casually, on her mobile phone!

  — Lydia isn’t thinking straight, of course.

  — She’s dangerous when she doesn’t think.

  This was another old pattern between them, his criticism of Lydia, Christine’s defence of her friend. Alex had sometimes, in the past, implied that Lydia was too shallow to make Zachary happy as he deserved. — This is a catastrophe for her. It’s our business to take care of her, Christine said.

  — I want to take care of her.

  — I know, she feels it. She appreciates it.

  Alex turned on his side, to face her in the dark; he put his hand on her pyjama top, onto her breast. Christine was shocked by the violence of her reluctance to make love to him. She knew they ought to be opened up to each other: Alex was right, his instincts were always good, more generous than hers. She half longed for the comfort he wanted to give her, and to comfort him. It was the same as when he’d made her listen right through to the end of the music, the day before. In her mind she understood how sex and death were both part of the mystery of entrances and exits, both opening onto this same strange place where they all belonged now, in the sudden shadow of Zachary’s death. But her body contracted against him in spite of her mind, she felt withdrawn inside her flesh, concealed in its sealed chamber, fierce against its violation. She wanted to try to explain to him that she couldn’t bear to be touched, not now, not yet: but she couldn’t, the words seized up in her chest, they wouldn’t come out. She pushed his hand away without a word, turned over with her back to him and pretended to sleep.

  In the middle of the night, Lydia came into their room. They woke confusedly to see her standing up at the end of the bed in her white nightdress, looking taller than she actually was against the faint light from the Velux, with her hair hanging down like a figure from a melodramatic play or an opera.

  — Lydia, can’t you sleep? Christine said.

  — I’m too frightened to sleep. And my feet are cold.

  Christine jumped up, she went rummaging in the chest of drawers for a pair of socks for her friend. — Get in under the duvet, she said. — Keep warm.

  When Lydia climbed into the bed, her movements were stiff-backed as an old woman; she did actually seem to be shuddering with cold, in spite of the warm night. Alex said nothing at first, lay turned away although he must have been awake. — I’m frightened, Lydia said. — Jane Ogden told me that Zachary vomited black blood.

  — Now, why did she have to tell you that? Christine said soothingly. — Why did you need to know?

  — I feel safer in here, between you two.

  Christine felt for her friend’s icy feet under the duvet. Tenderly she put on the woollen socks, then got back into bed beside her, putting an arm around her where she lay between them, against Alex’s turned back. Then he turned around and embraced her too. — Poor Lydia, he said.

  — Oh Alex. I wish that I had died instead, and he was still here.

  — Don’t be sil
ly. You’re what we have left, you’re all the more precious to us.

  At first Christine thought that Lydia would never sleep: she could feel the panic racing in her friend’s body like an animal’s fast metabolism. But very quickly Lydia’s breathing changed and grew shallow, she began twitching and jerking unconsciously. It was Christine’s turn to lie aridly awake. She was too hot, Lydia’s feverish dreams seemed to be burning her up. Christine couldn’t tell whether Alex was also awake. She half expected him to slip out of bed, go down to sleep more comfortably in the spare room. But he didn’t move.

  Two

  WHEN THEY WERE ALL IN their twenties and getting to know one another, it was Lydia Smith who was in love first with Alexandr. He was married at that time, in the mid-eighties, to his first wife Juliet. Sandy was three or four years old. Lydia and Christine had only just graduated, they were still living in a shared house with a couple of other student friends; Christine had embarked on the PhD in literature which she never actually finished, Lydia was working part-time in a bar. Alexandr Klimec was a few years older, he seemed properly grown-up to them, with a real life. They had met him when he taught French classes at their university; in those days you still had to do some French, as part of an English degree. Probably he’d hardly noticed them, two girls in a mixed group of students – although men usually noticed Lydia. Anyhow Alex had seemed entrancing to the girls, with his foreign handsomeness so exact and polished, his peculiar hazel eyes like cat’s eyes, his intelligence harsh as a knife, his disdain for their ignorance, his slightly guttural French accent. He hadn’t even taken the trouble to flirt with them, as other male teachers did. They had felt exquisitely crushed.