by Tessa Hadley
Nathan sank into despondency. They had no idea what it was like to face the future alone, he said: the unmade bed, old VHS recordings of French films, supermarket meals for one. He longed, he said, for the civilising influence of women. His friends were familiar with this phase of his mood, when he let himself fall into the safety net of their sympathy. When Nathan had actually had girlfriends, he’d panicked at the invasion of his privacy – of his den in Shepherd’s Bush whose ancient carpet smelled of dog although he’d never had one, and of his idiosyncratic routines: staying up till dawn, sleeping till noon. While everyone else grew out of the sordid spontaneity of youth, it had become his middle-aged fixed habit.
— You could try making your bed, Christine suggested.
Nonetheless the women preened in the light of Nathan’s admiration for their married lives, then drifted from wifely maturity into reminiscence of their schooldays. — You can’t have forgotten Miss Lowrie, Lydia insisted to Christine. — Creepy and fleshy, with goggle glasses.
— Biology lab?
— Gold watch cutting into her fat wrists. Ghastly malevolent axolotls snapping at rulers when we poked into their tank, and that tall cupboard with rows of jars, foetuses floating in formaldehyde.
— Lyd, they weren’t actually foetuses.
— Oh, I’m enjoying the foetuses, Nathan said. — Presumably an endless supply, from disgraced ex-pupils.
What Christine seemed to remember was pairs and threes of schoolgirls in bottle-green uniform, heads bowed in gossip, circling unceasingly around the great cedar in the grounds. The sheer tedium had been its own opaque medium, through which time barely moved. — Because at its root it wasn’t morally right, I suppose. Because the whole business of that school was separating people out to think a lot of themselves just because they had more money. Or, for the free-place girls like us, because we were clever in examinations. Entitlement was always in the air, even while they were breaking us cruelly down, in order for us to earn it.
— You exaggerate the cruelty.
Alex had no time for their protests over how hard they’d been made to work. The work was the good bit, he thought, in that kind of school; it was the boarding which was for barbarians. But Lydia insisted: this was her subject and she wouldn’t be deflected, even by Alex. — It was worse than she says. What was worse was how the other girls queued up for it. For the entitlement of course: but also, to be broken down. It excited them: being tamed and humiliated and sorted into ranks. Whereas Chris and I, you know, used to read the Communist Manifesto in our dinner break.
— Ostentatiously, Christine apologised. — We were awful show-offs. While the others made daisy chains or played French skipping with knotted elastic bands. And we were terribly bored by the Manifesto, couldn’t understand a word of it, we preferred historical novels, really. It came from the bookshelves at home: this was when Dad worked for governments in Africa, advising on primary health care. My parents in those days had a sort of mild hopefulness, in relation to communism. They thought things had gone sadly wrong in Russia, but were optimistic for the Third World, as we called it then. They believed that a lot of the bad news we heard was only American propaganda.
— Quaint, said Alex.
That old hopefulness seemed as remote now, she agreed, as believing in phrenology or mesmerism. — They didn’t know any better. But innocence has consequences, I know. It isn’t really innocent. Like all of us in the West now, having our cake and eating it. And borrowing money against our cake, as if we’ll never have to pay for it.
She tipped back and forwards on her wrist a horn bangle she’d bought the day before, from a Senegalese girl selling between cafe tables; when they’d asked the girl if she missed her home, she said she was going back there in three weeks. Afterwards they’d wondered if that was her stock reply. Perhaps it made the tourists more generous, if they weren’t afraid of her as a permanent fixture.
— Talking of cake, Zachary said, broaching the question of dessert.
When they’d finished eating and had coffee and paid the bill, they stayed sitting on at their table. — The cathedral’s really good you know, Zachary said. — And it does shut at four. But we don’t have to move from here, if you don’t want to.
They all agreed reluctantly that they must move on, and got up dreamily, eventually, in slow motion and lightly intoxicated, looking around them at the restaurant with regret, as if for something lovely and exceptional that could have been prolonged, but must be given up at last.
On Christine and Alex’s last full day, he and Lydia and Nathan caught the train to Vicenza, for a change; Zachary and Christine stayed behind because Zachary had promised to show her the Tiepolo ceiling in the Scuola dei Carmini. The day was overcast, the sky spat flurries of rain, tourists thronging in the narrow passageways were disconsolate. Yet forging her way among them, with Zachary steering, a touch on her shoulder or her elbow – this way, down here, turn left – Christine felt weightless and at ease, as if some effort of performance had fallen away. She was too transparent in her social relations, she thought, allowing the others’ moods and perceptions to be reflected in her chaotically, responding in too many directions, making doomed efforts to appease. Now that she let critical awareness drop – like sinking beneath the busily reflective surface of a lake – she was present in the day as quietly and alertly as if she were alone. Zachary, somehow, didn’t count; they were dear old companions, they needn’t try too hard. They exchanged one significant full smiling look, when the bells tolled from the Carmini church.
They had the Scuola to themselves at first. It took a few minutes, once they had ducked into the unpropitious entrance and were out of the flow in the streets, for its peace to sift down into consciousness; the sensation of driving forwards beat on noisily inside them while they stood blinking in the dim foyer, eyes adjusting and hearts slowing. They breathed a different stale, cool, motionless air: its ashy aftertaste of incense, layered deeply over centuries of consecration, alien to both their sensibilities and yet powerfully nostalgic. The cold stone itself smelled of it. A woman sold them tickets from behind the usual meagre display of dun postcards. In truth Christine had hardly thought in advance about the art, she was tired of being amazed by things, and Tiepolo anyway wasn’t one of her painters. She had thought the Scuola was going to be on a different scale and was pleased by its modest size, which suited her mood; she peered benignly, as if she were actually interested, into cabinets of religious insignia, medals, silverware, certificates of indulgence, embroideries brittle with age. And she was looking forward to finding a characterful little bar afterwards where she and Zachary could stop for coffee, confide their moods, share the latest art gossip.
When finally they were standing beneath the famous ceiling in the Sala, she was exceptionally receptive not because she was prepared, but because she wasn’t. It caught her out in her passivity, the blank of apprehension she presented to it. A pale clear light came in through windows composed of rounds of glass like bottle-ends; voices in the street outside were remote as the swallows’ shrieking. Dizzily she turned round and round where she stood, staring up, making her neck ache, trying to disentangle individual figures – whose foot is that, whose legs are those? – from the billows of gorgeous drapery, masses of rich form soaring against empty skies. She seemed to experience these colours – sumptuous pinks and gold and pale green – on her skin, the bodies’ torsion in her own muscles. Every ordinary day, while their lives went on elsewhere, the Virgin presided in here, a superb queen – and the force of the angels’ strong wings was like great birds’, so that you felt the updraught of their movement. She was in the presence of what was momentous. And in one corner was an awful darkness – an open grave, bones, brown filth, suffering, two hands emerging from a cloud, forming between fingers and thumbs an O for nothingness.
— Oh, it’s . . . I love this, Zach.
He put an arm across her shoulders. — I love it too. They staggered together, craning their head
s backwards, gazing up, pointing; then Zachary found mirrors backed with polished wood, put out for visitors to use. Humility with her long eyes, in pink and silver with a crown under her foot, cuddling a lamb, didn’t look humble in the least; they both agreed she looked like Lydia. Another couple, French, ascended the staircase, reading aloud from the leaflet; determinedly Christine and Zachary exuded an air of prior possession. By the time the French gave up and left, Christine was sitting on the wooden bench which ran around the base of the wall, looking into the mirror on her lap to take in the whole ceiling. Zachary sat down beside her and leaned over to see what she saw; Christine excitedly met his eyes in the glass, his reflection smiling out at her. — I love the past, she said.
— Oh yes, me too, the past.
— But I mean it, I’m serious, listen. Sometimes these days I almost think I can do without the present. The past is enough for me, it’s enough for my life. Does that sound insane? I could only say it to you.
— It’s not insane.
Watching his eyes in the mirror, she saw him feel with her what she felt. — I’m not saying that the past was good, she went on, — or fair, or better, or anything. But nothing will ever be more beautiful than this, will it? It’s surpassingly beautiful. It surpasses anything I could have imagined. It fulfils me, it’s enough for me.
Still smiling at her in the mirror, keeping his eyes on her, Zachary took her hand, bent over it, thoughtfully kissed the inside of her wrist. — I’m less original. I hunger for things in the present too.
— Well yes of course. But not in this moment.
— The past makes me more hungry.
— I do love you, you know, she said. — I can always talk to you, Zach, you’re my brother.
Then he sighed noisily. — I always seem to be everyone’s brother, don’t I?
Christine turned her whole gaze, dismayed, away from their reflections onto her friend’s actual face: between them in their surprise they almost let the mirror slip – he grabbed at it. She saw him differently: his animated boyish brightness, grey wiry hairs threaded in amongst the black of his beard, darkened anxious skin around his eyes, broken red veins on his nose, alert intelligence looking back at hers. Zachary never usually asked for any attention to himself – his geniality was a gloss, deflecting enquiry. Heavy against her, his body was scented with something nice and he gave off vitality like heat; when he kissed her wrist again she was startled by the tickling soft pressure of his beard. — Zacky, what do you mean? What about Lydia? You’re not her brother.
— Aren’t I? Or something faintly ignominious like it.
Christine thought that she must tread as delicately among these revelations as if they were jagged glass. — No. I don’t know. You’re not ignominious anyway.
— Well, that’s good.
— Only you two always seem so happy.
— We’re happy, it’s OK, don’t worry.
— I know Lydia can seem oblivious sometimes. She’s so imaginative and intelligent but there’s something fixed in her. Like Humility on the ceiling. She doesn’t change, and that’s her greatness – but also she doesn’t see you changing. Doesn’t see you seeing things.
— I suppose that’s about it.
Christine pressed on, disconcerted. — Have you ever had other women, Zach? Since you’ve been with Lydia. I think you haven’t.
— Not ever, no.
— And she’s never had other men. I’d know, I’m sure.
— We’ve both of us been absurdly faithful.
— Oh, and me too! Absurdly!
And Christine was tempted for a moment to ask him, what about Alex, what do you think? Has he been faithful? Then she thought that she and Zachary had talked about Alex too much, they’d been over that old ground too many times. He was still holding onto her hand. Leaning together, each feeling the other’s warmth, they sat looking up at the ceiling – just as they might have done in all innocence half an hour ago, except that everything was changed between them, Zachary’s dissatisfaction was substantial and discomfiting as a third presence. Christine was less at ease with this new Zachary, who was jaded and more worldly; on the other hand he impressed her more and she had to reckon with his new force, insisting on himself. He hadn’t ever been beautiful but his bulk and high colour were suddenly potent like a great merchant-broker’s in a portrait. — I find I’m quite ashamed, he said, — of not having sinned, now that we’re here in Venice. It seems unworthy. You know, of the art – and of all the incitements to pleasure. The general loveliness. The present company.
She squeezed his hand, he squeezed back tightly. — We could go to the apartment and have it all to ourselves, he said then, murmuring against her hair. — The others won’t be back until mid-evening at the earliest. Weren’t they going to eat in Vicenza?
— Zach, what are you suggesting?
— You know what I’m suggesting. Why not? It’s not as if we haven’t done it already. Couldn’t that make it all right?
Christine protested, appalled, laughing: he knew it didn’t! It could never be all right, not ever.
— Then let’s be all wrong. No one need ever know.
She said anyway weren’t they too old now? And they weren’t the type.
— I find I might be the type after all, he said. — In my old age. What about you?
Carefully she tried to steady her voice, as if she were warning him – or warning herself. — But I so love our London afternoons at home. When you come round and it’s raining and I make tea, Alex is at school, we sit and talk. I never even mind that you’ve interrupted my work: you’re the only one, I’m horrible with anyone else who bothers me.
— Well exactly, I love those rainy afternoons too, very much.
— I couldn’t want anything like that to change.
— Nothing would have to change. We could go on afterwards just as we did before. We’d never mention it, even to each other: as if it hadn’t happened. Except that it would have.
Above them on the ceiling an angel composed of creamy light was about to catch a man falling back with outflung arms from a high scaffold, swooping to scoop him up with such grace and lack of haste, and a long loving look – as if through this act every catastrophe could be held off, everything could be saved.
In the narrow lanes in the rain they hurried home among the tourists in their dripping plastic ponchos: as before he steered her from behind with his hand on her waist or her hip – left here, right there, only each time he touched her now she felt the jolt of their contact, a surge in her veins. They drank something standing up in a bar, for courage, because Christine was afraid their lust would dissipate before they got back, they’d be returned inside their daily selves, too embarrassed to act. But this didn’t happen. As soon as they closed the heavy street door behind them, shutting themselves up in the dank dusk-light and earth-smells of the piano terreno – along with a disintegrating old gondola and a few unclaimed tenants’ letters, brown with damp on a stone shelf – they seized on each other for the first time in twenty years. And they were still good together. She melted against him.
For luck, then, on their way up the stone staircase to their apartment, they both touched in passing the marble lion finial on the bottom step, his head worn blunt and smooth and dog-like from centuries of touching. Inside the apartment Zachary spread out one of the big bath towels on Nathan’s bed – by mutual unspoken consent they agreed they couldn’t be on either set of marital twins. How easy it somehow was for Christine to undress in front of Zachary, show herself to him: because he’d seen her before, when she was young. They seemed to remember everything, forgave each other everything, it didn’t matter if they were hasty or clumsy. When their lovemaking was over and they lay close together on Nathan’s narrow bed, the eccentric light-fitting on his ceiling was a revelation: they hadn’t noticed it till now. Staring up, they discussed in affectionate detail the twisting metal leaves and rosebuds painted pink and green, the cream glass lampshades shaped lik
e lilies. They swore they would never forget it afterwards, ever. And later, before the others got back, they put the towel in the washing machine along with a few more items waiting to be washed, turned on the machine.
Seven
CHRISTINE AND ALEX WERE SITTING together, estranged but familiar, in the darkened room – the same room where she’d brought him the news about Zachary, months before. She was in her usual chair; Alex sat on the sofa, head bowed, hands clasped between his knees. It was the first time since he’d left that they’d been able to talk together reasonably, without recriminations – or, as at that moment, sit without talking. Outside it was autumn: even indoors the air was tangy and dank with leaf mould. The copper beech beyond the window was a tawny purple, sinking into invisibility against the dusk; something outdoors was conscious, restless, scratching along the gutter, raking the pavement. Fallen leaves from the plane trees, drifted into heaps, stirred up skittishly in gusts of wind; ragged scraps of blue cloud hunted across livid orange in the west. Christine hadn’t put the heating on: there might be a reproach in the distinct chill, she might be making a point about how she was having to save money, now that her income was so reduced. She was wearing an ancient voluminous seaweed-coloured jumper, grey in the late light, which had belonged to her father – her chin buried for warmth in its deep roll neck, long cuffs pulled down across her hands. Alex’s jacket was too thin, he was getting used to the temperatures in Garret’s Lane. Lydia kept the heating atrociously high.
Mostly Alex and Christine had talked about Isobel. Neither of them had taken to her new boyfriend – too posh, too serenely assured. Blaise had blinked his light blue eyes at her parents warily, been manifestly unimpressed: as if he had taken it upon himself already to defend Isobel against what was unsound and suspect in their generation. But they agreed he was probably too stuffy to last – although Isobel seemed surprisingly keen. Both parents had observed, separately, deploring it, how pliantly their daughter accommodated herself to a certain inflexibility in Blaise. He was pleasant, well-informed and even amusing, but he didn’t adjust to fit in with his company, didn’t hold back his opinions – about Afghanistan, say, or about welfare dependency – which were disconcertingly conservative, though not merely conventional or stupid. Isobel darted glances approvingly at him, and was eager not to contradict this man who was not at all like the people she’d grown up with. She was still touchy with her father too. All the old ease had gone from between them and Alex suffered guiltily, though he didn’t say so to Christine. He’d forced upon his daughter knowledge of himself as a sexual male, which she’d rather not have had. But that couldn’t be helped now, couldn’t be undone.