Late in the Day

by Tessa Hadley

  Christine was watching him closely, and she spoke with sudden sympathy. — Oh, yes, I can see that, I can see what you mean.

  — But most people wanted Adidas trainers more than they wanted classical ideals, Lydia said.

  The women were filled with an infectious lightness, which partly came from the excitement of the gallery project. Zachary had told Christine he wanted her pictures in his first show, she was exuberant; Lydia was dizzy with choosing designs and furniture for their new home. She and Zachary were renting an apartment by the river while the chapel premises were transformed. Both women felt some balance of power in their lives had been restored in relation to their men, after the initial blow of becoming mothers to young babies, which had knocked them back; now their children filled them out rather than depleting them. Christine was aware too of a new strength in her relation to Alex, a private agnosticism like a resource of insight which she’d been collecting together slowly and invisibly. Perhaps this questioning of impervious male knowledge had always come to women at a certain age, in their prime, as they grew out of the illusions of girlhood. Or was it a new thing coming about in history, because of cultural change?

  — By the way I’ve a plan for next year, Alex announced casually.

  — What kind of a plan?

  — Oh, just something to believe in, as you put it.

  He’d thought he might do a year’s course, train as a schoolteacher. They were incredulous: that wouldn’t suit him, he’d never stick at it. — You haven’t got the patience for school teaching, Alex. You don’t know what it’s like, having to spend all day cooped up with children. And even if you got onto the PGCE, you’d hate being a student again, people telling you how to keep discipline in the classroom and all that stupid stuff. You’ll never actually get round to applying.

  — I’ve had the interview already, as it happens. They offered me a place, I’ve accepted it. There’s funding, and I could keep up some evening work at the language school.

  Christine looked at Lydia. — This is just like when he passed his driving test. He didn’t even tell me he was having lessons, until he’d passed! Why’s he so secretive?

  Parents arriving to pick up their children came rattling at the pub’s locked doors eventually; Pam and Tibs, descending into the lounge, kept on their party hats, sporting them with stiff dignity. Pam’s paper crown even helped her maintain a regal kind of order — the naughtier children glanced nervously in her direction, hurrying to play the video games Tibs had promised, which were ranged like robot-sentinels against the walls downstairs, flashing their coloured lights. The children in their ignorance were satisfied without putting any money in, pushing levers and pressing buttons. Grace’s white satin party dress was stained with orange squash, her cheeks were shiny with sugar and flushed with power, she was intoxicated from so much attention; hurtling towards Lydia she clasped her about the knees, rubbing a sticky face against her skirts, shrieking My Mummy! Lydia sat down abruptly on the padded banquette, awkward for once, seduced and flattered by Grace’s peremptory claim. Amazing that such a child, so wild and full of force, could possibly belong to her – or she to it! Pam came holding Isobel by the hand, saying she had been such a help with the little ones; so sensible and mature. And stolid, conscious Isobel blushed with pleasure, although Christine knew Pam meant she wasn’t spirited like Grace.

  — Lydia’s parents don’t like me, Christine said to Alex later, when they were at home and Isobel was asleep, mumbling anxiously in her dreams. — They never did. Or at least, Pam doesn’t. Tibs doesn’t even notice me.

  — It’s class, said Alex. — You’re not their type. They think that you think you’re superior. Perhaps they think you took Lydia away from them.

  She considered this idea for an instant, conscience-stricken. — But they couldn’t seriously think I took her anywhere! It’s always Lydia who takes me. And if it’s class, then how come they like you? Pam likes you, anyhow. But you’re an intellectual, you’re more superior than I ever was. I try so hard with them!

  — They feel you trying. And I doubt whether Pam has any thoughts about me either way. I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged more than a few platitudes.

  — It isn’t words, Alex. She watches you, I see it; women watch you. Pam thinks you’re wasted on me, she’s always thought that. She admires you from a safe distance – relieved at the same time that Lydia’s got Zachary, who makes everything easy.

  There was a private view and party for the opening of the Garret’s Lane gallery, and all the right people found their way to the little cul-de-sac; the write-ups for the opening exhibition were good, the critics were encouraging, there were nice photographs of the conversion as well in an architectural magazine. It was a good beginning. Zachary by this time had taken on inspired, shrewd, calculating Hannah as his manager, and there had been an awful morning six months before the opening when Hannah came to talk to Christine in confidence. — I love your pictures, she had said. — I love them. But they’re not the right thing for Zach’s opening. They’re not big enough. He needs to aim at something big, right from the beginning. You’re not a big enough name, not yet. And he shouldn’t begin anyway with a mixed exhibition: it’s too timid, not enough of a statement. I’ve talked to Hari Rostami, he could be interested in putting together a new show for us. He’s what the gallery needs, as a launch pad – you know, the name, the noise! Later, when Garret’s Lane is big, Zachary can do what he likes. He can put you on properly, and you’ll be big then because he’s put you on.

  In her hurt Christine cast around vindictively: she thought that Hannah was head-girlish, leaning forward so eagerly to placate her, the glossy wings of her red hair swinging. Her dark fitted suit, no doubt intended as film noir-ish, was more like a school uniform, and her figure was top-heavy with incongruous bosom. Christine felt pinned to the spot, faking smiling carelessness, as if she were being lectured for not pulling her weight on the hockey team. — You’ll never forgive me for saying this, Hannah apologised. — I hate myself for saying it. But it’s my business to have Zach’s interests and the interests of the gallery at heart. Of course I’ve said it all to Zachary already, he knows what I think, but he’s adamant, he’s faithful to you because you’re his friend – and because he believes in your work. He thinks I’m wrong, and even if he didn’t think I was wrong I don’t think that he’d change his mind because he promised, and he couldn’t bear to let you down. You know him, you know what he’s like. And of course if you decide to take no notice of me, which I’d completely and utterly understand, then you’ll just hate me for it, and I’ll understand that too, and I’ll also back your work to the hilt. I’ll do everything in my power to prove myself wrong.

  It was a wound, and Christine, sick with the humiliation, crawled to bed all alone in the middle of the day while Alex was out at college and Isobel was at school, curled up around her own disgust at the pain of it, the shame. — We could always hang some of your things in the cafe, Hannah had said, and that had been the worst moment. But then Christine went to Zachary and confessed that she didn’t think she’d have enough work ready for the show, and was quite sure that she didn’t want to be in the cafe either. He was so disappointed, but he asked her what she thought of Hari Rostami instead of a mixed exhibition, and she said that sounded just perfect, although in her heart she believed that Rostami’s installations were just empty, clever things: empty and ugly. By the time of the opening night she was all right. She never told anyone what had gone on between her and Hannah, the two of them never spoke about it, and she did hate Hannah for a while afterwards, until eventually she forgot to. And later, as the years passed, Christine was part of several mixed exhibitions in the gallery space, and had two solo shows there.

  Naturally she knew people, at least some, at the opening night party. Once it was actually happening she felt light-hearted, relieved that it wasn’t her work exposed on the walls – costing her peace of mind, crushing her with its importance. She could
go on clasping its secrets to herself, her treasure which did not have to be weighed yet or found wanting. Hannah had been right, this wouldn’t have been a suitable occasion for showing off anyone’s subtle art. So she didn’t have to be an artist at the party, and Zachary had given her the money to buy something nice to wear. The folded notes when she took them had been warm from his trouser pocket, and the gift had made her feel as if everything that had ever been between them – including even Hannah’s secret visit, which perhaps he really didn’t know about, or only half-knew – was understood without needing explanation. Christine had bought a full-length vintage blue silk-crêpe dress whose bodice was sewn with silver beads, and had pinned up her hair and made up her face carefully; she was aware of snagging a few appraising glances. The heavy silk swung satisfyingly as she circulated; she was thin, she’d lost weight since she had Isobel. And the dress was very naked around her throat and arms, plunging bare to her waist at the back. She had her grandmother’s silver chain around her neck and nothing on underneath except her knickers.

  She didn’t stand out, the place was full of women dressed up gorgeously. Lydia, in a white lace dress by Helmut Lang, seemed almost to have attained the aplomb of a consort, becoming a still point around which all the circles moved – while Zachary went everywhere in the crowd, greeting and blessing. Even when they were students, at parties in basement flats with warm white wine in plastic cups, Lydia had had a way of settling herself on a mattress on the floor as if it were a throne where she received petitioners, dispensing favours or cutting them off. Christine was as disdainful in her judgements as Lydia and yet didn’t know how to convey that she too was clever, superior, easily bored. She knew she seemed too eagerly apologetic, too quick to blame herself for any faltering of interest; she probably ought to be less amenable, if she wanted to be taken seriously. Weren’t great artists always difficult? At least the lovely spaces of the new gallery were so crowded that quite literally you couldn’t be left standing alone. Pushing past so many interesting strangers, she scrambled out onto little islets of acquaintance and then regretted it, felt stranded and looked round surreptitiously for rescue.

  From time to time the press of bodies parting afforded her a moment’s glimpse of Alex. She expected him to be prowling, disaffected and moody. He hated parties, and she’d made him wear a suit which she’d found for him in an Oxfam shop – dark wool, fitting him perfectly. But he wasn’t moody, he was talking to people, making himself charming, looking as if he was amused and in his element. The teaching course was good for him, she thought. He was taken outside himself, learning to perform for others. Christine saw how he was touching with particularity the women he was talking to, fingertips on the inside of an elbow or palm on a bare shoulder – perhaps she ought to be afraid of this, but was just curious. He was striking in his new suit, which had played its trick of conferring authority. She thought she’d have been attracted to this clubbable, suave, urgent Alex, if he’d been a stranger. And would he have liked her, in her blue dress?

  Then she was distracted because Hari spoke to her and surprised her by being friendly, making a point of saying nice things about her work, so that she was buoyantly afloat at the heart of the occasion for ten minutes. When Hari turned away she didn’t mind sinking under its surface again, slipping between the turned animated backs, sipping at her drink for something to do, getting drunker, pretending to give Hari’s installations her sustained attention. The crowds were beginning to thin out because the party had started early; its high-pitched excitement wound down amiably. Long before it was even midnight Hannah was chasing the last stubborn pleasure-seekers out of the gallery. — But we can’t go to bed! protested Zachary. — I’m not ready for bed, not for hours and hours! I’m just getting into my party mood.

  A few old friends retreated into Lydia and Zach’s new place next door. They’d moved in a few weeks ago. Isobel was asleep upstairs with Grace; they had paid a babysitter for the duration of the party, a nice teenager – Alex walked her home, she only lived around the corner. They weren’t any of them habituated yet to the new rooms – glass and steel fitted cleverly inside the lovely old forms, blond parquet floors restored, a new spiral stair, features made of the great chapel desk and the stone sink in the kitchen, huge as a cattle trough, with its brass tap. It was like staying in somebody else’s house which you coveted madly, Christine said: you found yourself playing at being the somebody else. They were all showing off, in the unfamiliar spaces – and they were suddenly shivering too, exhausted from socialising. Christine, going up to check on the children, swayed from the door jamb dizzily: the little girls were flung in sweetly unconscious disorder in their sleep, Grace on her tummy with her arms up in surrender, Isobel curled around herself protectively. When Alex got back from dropping off the sitter he lit a fire in the new wood-burner, crouching on his heels in front of its window in his smart suit, jacket undone and tie loose, hands hanging between his knees, watching the flames take hold. — You’re like primitive man, Alex, the fire-maker, Jane Ogden admired. He flashed his palms at her, filthy with ash and charcoal, mock-threatening, then went to wash. The women eased out of their shoes, groaning. Zachary came in dangling a choice of bottles at them – which? More champagne or Armagnac or both?

  He threw his bag of weed at Nathan Kearney, for rolling up. Coffee, coffee, they all insisted. But Zachary poured them out spirits with their coffee, something very sweet made of rose petals and flavoured with bergamot, the kind of thing that Alex would never usually have touched, but he drank it too because they were all under the spell of the occasion. All of them were drunk already, anyway: on the glamour of their success, Zachary’s success, as well as on the champagne. — Hari said such good things about you! Zachary put his arm around Christine, stretching his feet in their crimson socks out towards the stove; she arranged her own bare feet – nice enough, with their high arches and aristocratic long second toe – alongside his. Her toenails were elegantly painted for once, in a crimson that happened to match his socks. They were all sprawled across cushions on the thick Turkish rugs in front of the stove, holding out their hands to its warmth which melted and unknotted them invidiously and deliciously. Lydia, sitting upright with her back to the sofa, was the only one still alert, turning her head in her deliberate way towards whoever was speaking. The gossip went on desultorily. But one by one, once the coffee was finished, people were bound to make their farewells – even Jane Ogden, even Nathan – until only the four of them were left.

  Zachary poured more of the rose-petal spirit, then sat down with his arm around Christine again; Alex put another log in the stove. They all slid down to stretch out full length on the cushions, and had given up on talking in complete sentences – they may have been exaggerating their drunkenness, clearing a way through to what happened next. Lying in the space between the two women, Alex began kissing Christine on the neck, under her hair. After a while he turned to Lydia and kissed her too, as if it were only fair; he was stroking Christine at the same time, his hand was moving on her lazily. Both the women made sleepily responsive noises, to convey they were only half conscious of what was happening. Then Christine turned over on her side towards Zachary. Smiling, she kissed him full on the mouth, tasting the liquor and the dope and all the piquant familiarity and strangeness of him – when they’d made love together such a long time ago, he hadn’t had a beard. Alex’s hand was gliding over the top of her dress and then sliding underneath it, exploring; sometimes his hands were on her and sometimes they were on Lydia, sometimes he was touching them both at once. Christine turned around to give her attention to Alex again and Zachary came cuddling up behind so that she felt his beard against her bare back, his purposeful kisses moving down her spine, on the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Lydia with her arm flung out found Christine’s hand. Zachary was pushing the straps of Christine’s dress from her shoulders and Alex was exploring with one hand under the lacy white fabric of Lydia’s bodice. He seemed intent on Lydi
a but with his other hand he was searching intently too, fumbling down between Christine’s knees, pushing apart the thick folds of the material of her dress, finding his way up.

  Later that night, when they were alone in the new spare room, Christine interrogated Alex incredulously. — Would you? Would you really have done it?

  They were half-undressed in the lamplight, still excited; she was kneeling over him where he lay on his back on the bed with his suit jacket and shoes off, shirt unbuttoned halfway. The blue dress was pushed up around her thighs. — Would you have gone through with it? Are you disappointed?

  His hazel eyes were gleaming, pupils dilated. — Would you?

  Christine was amazed by what they’d done. — What came over us? We must have been mad! But really, how could we have arranged things, if they’d gone on any further? I mean, what . . .?

  — And are you disappointed?

  She was laughing but put her hand over his mouth to stop him, said she couldn’t think about it, they mustn’t think. Or at least they mustn’t speak their thoughts aloud. Her hair was falling down from where it had been pinned, her make-up was smudged under her eyes, her face was blurry and dissolute with tiredness and drink, she was thoroughly desirable in that moment of their married love.

  The opportunity for their debauchery in a foursome never came around again. It must have depended on being so innocently unplanned. They hadn’t got much further along than the preliminaries, in any case, and were all still quite decently in their clothes, when Zachary had caught sight of little Isobel in her nightie standing like a sentinel angel at the bottom of the spiral staircase, looking at them with frightened and fierce eyes. Alex reassured Christine afterwards that there hadn’t been anything for Isobel to see: at any rate she wouldn’t remember seeing it in the morning. Righteously Isobel had announced that Grace was crying. — She’s been crying for hours and hours. How come you didn’t hear her calling? She wants her mummy. Lydia, she wants you.