by Tessa Hadley
It was always a relief, pouring out her hoarded grievances for Zachary to hear. And yet when Christine had finished she was half ashamed, because they weren’t the whole truth – although Alex really was impossible and she really was afraid of him sometimes, of his cold look cast at her, shutting her out of his favour. In their early days – when his favour had fallen on her uninvited, like Jove’s shower of gold, and before she’d had Isobel – she’d felt that she could leave him easily if they quarrelled or she changed her mind. She was free! Love was his idea, not hers. Then as time passed Alex’s force had melted something resisting in her, so that she had taken on a new shape, fitting against his. But it wasn’t always his fault when things were difficult. Under the surface of their relationship she often fought against him: against his authority, which he took for granted. He was bewildered sometimes, she thought, by the twists and turns of her dissatisfaction, and how she manoeuvred to put herself in the right. Women used their pleasantness sometimes as a weapon, a subtle knife.
Zachary began to give her a small amount of money secretly, and she paid one of the other mothers to pick up Isobel from school on her painting days, so that she could go on working for two precious extra hours, while Alex taught. Zach said he was investing in her career. There was even a relish, a hot triumph, in keeping secrets from her husband. She knew that Alex didn’t really attend to her opinions, or weigh them against his own. He liked to talk with men, or to have women listen to him; in company he was surprised if the women made too much noise, too insistently – he retreated then into his privacy, his irony. Christine beat against his indifference, in her mind. He wasn’t indifferent to her moods or her feelings, only her ideas. If he loved her, it was for what she was unconsciously. He didn’t mind her having opinions, but that wasn’t the same thing as his really taking notice of them – as he might do, for instance, if he thoroughly attended to a book which changed his mind. She desired this real, mind-changing attention from him, for her thoughts, for her work. Was it out of petulance or egoism merely? Otherwise her husband didn’t really know her. Didn’t she love him for the content of his thoughts? Didn’t she take so much of her truth from him?
It had been obvious all along that Zachary must open his own art gallery. And then almost as soon as he went looking for a premises he found a red-brick chapel, built by the Huguenots in a modest back street of terraced eighteenth-century cottages in Clerkenwell. The chapel’s main entrance and its row of arched side-windows fronted directly onto the street: the windows still had their original thick flawed greenish glass. In its proportions the place was domestic, friendly – the interior with its floor tiles worn by human passage into a shallow relief landscape, its dreamy underwater light, its gracefully curving upper gallery supported on iron pillars. After the Huguenots the chapel had been Wesleyan and the Wesleys themselves had preached there, then it was a school for a while, and then a chapel again – Bethesda, into the 1970s. An arched gateway wide enough for a wagon, fitted at some point with corrugated iron doors now rusted fantastically, gave access to a cobbled courtyard overgrown with buddleia and nettles and filled up high with junk – old chapel pews ripped out when the chapel was used as storage for a builders’ merchant, heaps of rotted drugget, plastic sacks of hardened cement, abandoned steel scaffolding poles and bolts, an ancient Gurney stove, hymn books rotted down to pulp.
The place fitted every part of Zachary’s idea and even surpassed it because he could make a home for his family as well, in the adjoining parish rooms which had been added on in the nineteenth century and came as part of the purchase. And the sensation of dropping down into this pocket of stillness and neglect – sometimes no one passed in the little cul-de-sac for half an hour at a time – was somehow significantly related to the roaring traffic and filthy air just around the corner on the main road. The chapel wouldn’t have appealed half as much, Zachary explained, if it hadn’t been less than a minute’s walk from the clamour of car body repair shops and kebab shops, printworks, fabric wholesalers, a funeral director’s with sculpted ebony horses’ heads on folds of sky-blue satin in the window, a dingy pub with yellow bottle-glass in mock-Tudor windows where a star cut out from fluorescent card, hand-lettered in felt pen, announced Topless Waitress’s.
Lydia flew over with Grace from New York to take a look. — This is a crazy place, she said. — I think you’re crazy. We can’t live in a church! We will be haunted. Think how these people would have hated us.
— They don’t hate us now, Zachary said. — They’re dead, they’ve transcended mortal prejudice. If they’re watching us they’ll understand our idea, they’ll like it. We’ll plant a tree in the middle of the courtyard.
Looking into the courtyard, Lydia was appalled by the accretions of so many generations of rotted filth, piled up to the level of the windows: this chaos seemed unalterable to her, like something fixed and cruel. She couldn’t have faced it herself, but she trusted Zachary. Contracts were exchanged, he was given the keys, and they invited Christine and Alex – who else? – to drink champagne with them that same afternoon in the chapel, consecrating its new life in art. Zachary kissed the keys ceremoniously in the street outside – where still, perhaps disconcertingly, no one passed. Would anyone ever visit the gallery? The keys themselves, anyhow, were things of beauty, with their austerely slender iron stems and the ellipse of their bow-ends, drawn fine as italic calligraphy. It seemed a miracle that after almost three hundred years you could put the same key in the same lock and turn it, and the mechanism would respond to its cue: they had brought WD40 but didn’t need it. The door swinging back on its hinges allowed them inside, where they had visited before, of course, but only under the inhibiting scrutiny of the estate agent. The musty, dusty, empty, softly echoing high space belonged to them now – they could do what they liked with it. Pale October light filtered through cobwebs as thick as cloth in the windows.
— What money can buy, Alex marvelled, looking round him: if it was a criticism then Zachary, in any case, would never apologise, not even to Alex, for what he insisted on thinking of as his great good luck. It was good luck for all of them, for everyone, for art, wasn’t it? And the chapel was saved from dereliction. The little girls went running off, up and down the stairs to the gallery, giving out screams of freedom, dizzied by the emptiness, their hard shoes pounding on the bare boards, Isobel hanging onto Grace’s hand responsibly, Grace protesting, trying to tug her hand away and run by herself. Sandy, who stayed with Alex and Christine at weekends, traipsed after the girls, bored as usual, with his hands in his pockets; he was thirteen and his peaky face, faintly freckled, with a fine uneasy jawline, had just begun to be good-looking. He gelled his pale hair and wore it flopped in a thick wave across his forehead, or falling forward into his eyes; his gaze melted away reluctantly from any encounter, especially with his father. And Alex responded to his son’s withdrawal coolly, although Christine urged him to try harder. He accepted as if it were inevitable that Sandy had finished with him and they must go their separate ways.
They found whole rooms whose existence they had forgotten since they were last shown round: cubbyholes and sculleries and pantries and outhouses; a back kitchen with a brass tap hanging on its pipe away from a wall tiled in ocean green, over a stone sink; the stone steps of a curving stair worn by the passage of many feet; a porcelain toilet in its own throne room, the Thunderer, with an overhead cistern and a chain to pull. In an office a great desk of warped mahogany held record books and accounts from Bethesda chapel days. Breathless from running, Isobel pleaded with Zachary, seizing his hands. — Never, never change this place Zacky, will you? Always leave it like this. Me and Grace love it how it is.
Isobel was stocky and earnest, with a shy sense of decorum and a woman’s developed features, too expressive for her soft face. — Izzy’s right, Zachary said, hunkering down to her level. — It’s perfect like this. Shall we just keep things this way forever, and come picnicking here every weekend?
—
It has to change, my darling, Christine said, quick to feel her daughter’s deep attachments and disenchantments. — Zachary’s going to make it into a gallery with paintings and sculptures and installations: that will be lovely too.
Isobel reassured herself. — It will just be lovely in a new way.
There were still a few pews piled up against the chapel walls; they pulled them together and Zachary set out his feast of bread and foie gras, Italian cheeses and mostarda di frutta pickle, with baklava and pears and brownies – they used paper plates, and had to share one plastic knife. Everyone wore their coats; the electricity wasn’t switched on yet so they didn’t have any heating, and a stony cold rose up through the brick-red floor tiles crusted with cement dust. The women kept on their gloves because their hands were freezing. Zachary lit candles when the light began to fade, and the children invented some game of advancing into the dark then running screaming back into the safety of the illuminated circle. After a while even Sandy couldn’t resist joining in, inventing things to make the game more seriously terrifying, darkness covering the sacrifice of his grown-up aplomb.
The adults huddled closer for warmth among the candle shadows blooming and elongating on the chapel walls, Christine and Alex on one pew and Lydia and Zachary on another pew facing them, all their knees pressed together across the gap; the restless candlelight seemed like an emanation of their young inner lives, urgent and expectant and sensuous. Christine’s animation – her awkward thinness, her quick attention and talk, the plait of her light brown hair wound round her head and slipping loose – offset Lydia’s self-possession. There was a sheen of new sophistication on Lydia, from New York; she had shed her sulky, punky look and was groomed and sleek, looked the world in the eye with a new candour. But Christine felt with relief that this candour was only another subtle layer of Lydia’s performance. She was not translated wholly into the worldly woman whose part she played.
The four of them were happy to be back together again. The champagne went to their heads, and Zachary had bought dope from Alex’s dealer; Christine was the only one who didn’t smoke, it made her sick. Arguing over Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, which they had seen the night before as part of a retrospective at the BFI, they hardly took the trouble to hide their smoking from the children, who knew about funny cigarettes. Christine said she only really liked the bit at the beginning of the film, when they stop the car in the mist and walk to see the painting in the little church; the woman says it’s so beautiful, and following her the man says he’s had enough of beauty. — But then it gets silly, she said. — It’s just an idea of life, one man’s idea. At every point after that I could see they were actors, acting, and I could imagine the director, directing them.
— Christine’s very literal-minded, Alex said. — She likes the art of everyday.
— That’s so unfair, she said, — because I love all kinds of art, I’ve loved other Tarkovsky. But isn’t it a cliché, because the man is pursuing meaning and art and truth, and the woman only wants love and happiness? It’s somewhat more likely to have been the other way round, in real life: the middle-aged writer pursuing the attractive young woman, and her fending him off.
— That’s such an uninteresting way of thinking about the film, Alex protested.
— I believed it implicitly anyway, Lydia said. — There are men like that.
Zachary asked if Christine hadn’t loved the famous single shot of the writer carrying a lit candle the whole length of the empty pool, and Christine conceded wholeheartedly, with sudden emotion, that yes, that was so meaningful and moving, it had made up for everything. And then the children came screaming out of the darkness, flinging recklessly into the circle of grown-ups, hiccuping with fear and laughter, taking refuge between Christine’s knees and Zachary’s, the adults kissing them and hanging onto them, holding them safe, the children breathing in the fumes of drink and marijuana. They flung away again, into the terrors hidden in the dark. Sometimes Zachary went charging after them, growling like a bear, to their extreme delight although they shrieked with fear. He had put on weight, he had the authority of a substantial man these days, with his booming voice and laughter, his air of knowing where to find all the good things worth having. But he kept a quick concern in his expression from boyhood: the blinking watchful eyes following everyone with his enquiry into their well-being. Were they all right? Did they have everything they wanted? They told him to stop fussing, relax, they were fine. Lydia complained that Zachary was always the enabler, concealing himself behind his attentions to others. — I don’t know what I want for myself, he conceded happily. — I’ve got everything.
Alex was the moody prince with his pent-up angst. He was still slight at the waist and hips, still had his thick hair with its bronze gleam cut in the old style, fringe hanging into his eyes. The hazel cat’s eyes and curving mouth – too often closed in disappointment – were sensual and feminine despite himself. He’d have liked to give nothing away. And yet he was also vain, he was human, he was like everyone else: Christine knew how, although he avoided mirrors, if he caught sight inadvertently of his own reflection he straightened his shoulders and stood taller, renewed by these glimpses of his good looks, his power. When they went out in company other women looked at Alex surreptitiously or hungrily, and Christine was gratified that such a man had chosen her. But how long would the women admire him if he persisted in refusing to take on any substantial role in the world, or any status? Reading so much and knowing so much, but with nothing to show for it.
They stayed in the chapel until long past the little girls’ bedtime; Grace was wild with fatigue. They were all disinhibited in the new, strange place, and because of the drink and the smoking. Lydia spoke about the therapist she’d been seeing in New York. Or rather, the two therapists: she couldn’t make up her mind which one had the right insights to unlock her problem. With one of them it was all about her mother. — The other one’s a man, she said, — and he’s much harder on me, but I trust his judgement more. Though he says that’s part of my problem, always seeking out the people who will judge against me, so that I can’t break out of a fatal cycle in which I self-sabotage, punishing myself for being myself.
— But what is your problem exactly? Alex said severely.
She gazed at him, eyes glittering in the candlelight. — Well, I’m not very good at being happy.
— You are good at it! Christine cried out in protest.
— I don’t feel entitled to happiness, Lydia said. — For instance how I was at school, always thinking the other girls were the real thing and I was only passing myself off, I was a sham.
— No you didn’t, Lyd! That’s not what you thought! We despised school!
— Lydia is more melancholy than you’d ever guess, put in Zachary, as if it was another of her marvels.
She held herself upright and steady, submitting to their scrutiny; if she wasn’t happy then it was to her credit that she didn’t mope, always appeared unruffled and serene. — You should work, Alex said. — You should fill up the hours of your day with discipline.
— Because of Zach’s money though, she patiently explained, — I don’t have to. When I worked in bars and waitressing I wasn’t doing it to fill up my time. Or are you suggesting I should join a committee, supporting the arts or doing good or something? But I think that I’d hate doing good. My idea is that Zachary does the good, on my behalf.
— Isn’t it Lydia’s genius, Christine said, — just to live, like an aristocrat in another era? To be herself, while the rest of us are running round like idiots, because we’ve inherited a punishing puritanism.
Alex said therapy was a parade of suffering, everyone poking their fingers into their own wounds in a competition to see who’d suffered most. — It’s magical thinking. Believing that every random thing happening is an element in an encoded secret story, and that if only you can crack the code, you can be set free.
— But can’t I be set free? Lydia said plaintively, self-mockingly.
— Freedom isn’t about liking yourself, Alex said. — That’s just an indulgence, a distraction from freedom in the real world.
— Politics is Alex’s trump card, Christine said. — He uses his real world to squash everyone else’s argument. Why is your real world always the realest, Alex?
She could see he was spoiling something which had seemed to Lydia to matter and be hopeful, in New York. To distract them from quarrelling Zachary tried to carry a candle ceremoniously the length of the draughty chapel, like the writer in the film. After he’d done it they all had to have a go: Alex went too fast, his candle blew out and he had to begin again twice. Lydia did it the first time, her stately pace in her high heels was just right.
In bed at home later that night, Alex suggested unexpectedly to Christine that they should forget about taking care and make another baby, and she agreed, she was carefree, the shape of her own history felt loose and open, anything was possible. And in fact she did get pregnant again around that time, but lost the baby at ten weeks, and although she grieved for it, and was bereft and humbled for a while, she was also half-relieved. She’d have loved the baby utterly if it had come, of course – she loved Isobel more than anything in the world. But it hadn’t been a baby, only a cluster of cells. Babies took up so much time, so much of your life energy, and she was working well at the moment. She was thinking a lot about Paula Rego and influenced by her had started on a new series, pictures of men and women embracing imaginary birds as harbingers and emblems. These were small, cramped inside the picture frame: a cock robin, a phoenix, a pelican piercing its own breast to feed its young, a jaunty folkloric crow. She was working in acrylics for the first time. Anyone could make a baby. Only a few could make a painting.