Treasures of Time

by Penelope Lively

  ‘Not at all,’ said Tom. ‘Nice to see a place one doesn’t know.’ They hurried back, along the wide, peopled boulevards, up steps, along ramps. ‘Odd,’ Tony said, ‘my memory’s usually pretty good. Nottingham, that “Women at Work” series must have been. Here we are…’ Up more steps, along another ramp, more steps. Floor C, Deck 2: no car. ‘Christ,’ said Tony, ‘wrong bloody car park.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ he said, half an hour later, gliding back onto the motorway, ‘You do lose your bearings a bit, working at this sort of pace. I don’t just mean fetching up in the wrong shopping centre – sorry about that – I mean there’s never a chance to, well, sit down and take stock. I envy you, Tom, I really do.’

  ‘I was just wondering if I didn’t rather envy you.’

  In Hertfordshire, Tony turned off the motorway once more. ‘I hope I’ll be able to find this place,’ he said. ‘It’s a year or more since I was here. Village called Hevenham.’ It was dusk, and raining. They splashed down narrowing roads. ‘Hmnn,’ said Tony. ‘Bit tricky.’ ‘Map?’ ‘There’s a road-map in the pocket beside you.’ Tom turned up the appropriate page in a book reassuringly spattered with place-names.

  There was a crunch and a pop from under the bonnet. The engine died. Tony said, ‘Bloody hell’. He steered the car into a field-entrance. Tom said, ‘Oh dear.’

  Tony got out, and opened the bonnet. He stared down. After a minute he came back. ‘I don’t suppose you know about the insides of cars? Well, the only thing to do is walk to the nearest house, I suppose.’

  ‘Actually,’ Tom said, ‘we’re only about a mile from this village.’ Tony brightened. ‘Well, providing we can rustle up a garage, and it’s nothing too serious, all is not lost. We can eat while they fix it and push on after. Can you just chuck me my jacket.’

  ‘Tony,’ said Tom after a moment, ‘I’m afraid you must have…’

  Tony peered frantically into the back of the car. ‘Christ. That place we stopped for petrol. I took it out to pay. I must have left it at their cash desk.’ There was a silence. Tom said, ‘Well, you do seem to have bad luck with jackets, I must say.’ Tony was trying to restrain his agitation. ‘Wallet, cheque book, credit cards, the lot,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m most awfully sorry. Can we put this down to you and settle up later? I must say, I hope I can get my stuff back or it’s going to be a hell of a hassle.’

  Tom said cheerfully, ‘Sure. It’ll have to be a cheap dinner, though. I’ve got about two fifty on me.’ Tony looked shaken. ‘Oh, I see. And you haven’t got…’ ‘’Fraid not. My credit’s not that good anyway.’

  They set off. Tony, jacketless, in jeans and a sweater, the rain spotting his Mahler spectacles so that he had to keep taking them off to wipe them, looked less well-adjusted than usual; in fact, the stuffing seemed to have been knocked out of him. Tom noticed for the first time that he walked with a slight stoop. He said, ‘I’m afraid you’re getting soaked.’ ‘Mmn. What I’ll have to try to do, is get them to put it down to the BBC.’ ‘Do you think they’ll have heard of it?’ said Tom. ‘It looks pretty rustic round here.’ Tony laughed without conviction.

  The village, at last attained, offered little but a pub of dauntingly functional appearance, a small garage, and the hotel-restaurant for which Tony had been heading. The garage was shut. The restaurant looked interestingly expensive. Tony said, ‘I suppose I’d better try the garage first.’ He hesitated, and then walked towards the bungalow at the back of the forecourt.

  After a few minutes he returned, looking even more depleted than before. ‘They were unenthusiastic, to put it mildly. Eventually they said they’d send a chap out to have a look.’ Tom said, ‘I expect your stock’ll go up a bit after that – they’ll know an expensive car when they see one.’ Tony, clearly ruffled by his experience with the garage, was staring gloomily at the pub. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘let’s go into The Gay Adventure and see if we can’t fix something up.’ Tom followed him into the restaurant; it was ill-lit and thickly carpeted. Tony perked up.

  The warm welcome cooled rapidly. Tony talked. Tom withdrew and studied some tasteful prints of old fire engines on the wall. Tony’s back view, glanced at from time to time, had an air of quiet desperation about it; a thin shoulder blade stuck out, moving up and down as he talked. Once, he laughed – a brief, self-deprecating, ingratiating laugh. It was not possible to see the restaurateur’s response. At last, the man lifted the telephone. Tom saw that agitated shoulder-blade slump in relief. There were diallings, brief exchanges, then Tony’s rather high voice saying ‘Mike? Tony here – thank God there’s someone around. Look, I’ve got a problem…’

  He joined Tom. ‘Well, all’s well. We can eat. In fact, we can do ourselves proud after that little nightmare. They’re getting onto the garage too. What’ll you have to drink?’ He led the way into the bar.

  Tom said, ‘And here was I thinking it was going to be the evening of the common man. You won’t be wanting my two fifty, then?’

  Tony was reinflated. He scanned the menu, ordered Martinis, supervised Tom’s selection of a meal. The waiter came with a message from the garage. ‘It’s some nonsense with the electricals,’ said Tony. ‘Apparently it’ll take them a couple of hours at least, so we might as well take our time. Another drink?’

  After a while Tom said, ‘I think I’d better ring Kate.’ He felt fairly high; lunch had been a long time ago; in the phone booth, the digits on the dial were not as clear as he would have liked. ‘Kate?’ ‘Where on earth are you? I thought you’d be back hours ago.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s like this, actually it’s a long story, the fact is…’ ‘You’re in a pub,’ said Kate crossly. ‘Well, yes and no.’ ‘What do you mean, yes and no?’ Tom looked through the glass into the red-leather-and-tropical-plant reception hall: ‘Well, rather more yes than no, I suppose.’ ‘Are you with Tony thing still?’ ‘Sort of.’ ‘I can’t hear you properly, when are you coming back? Tom, are you there…’

  He said confidingly to Tony, ‘You know, I think she thinks I’m with a girl.’

  ‘I hope you told her she had no cause for alarm. They want us to go through and eat.’ At the table, he went on ‘I have a feeling your Kate is a wee bit hostile where I’m concerned’. Tom made good-gracious-no faces; there was a nice big bottle of wine on the table.

  It occurred to him that he would have no idea if Tony liked girls or not. Or what. He stared reflectively at Tony, who was talking about his time at Oxford, and his time wondering what he wanted to do, and his time beginning to do it.

  Some while later, he thought of Kate again. He said to Tony, ‘I think I’ll just…’

  Kate sounded muffled. ‘You what?’ ‘Just thought I’d see you’re all right.’ ‘What else could I be, sitting here? What are you doing, Tom? What do you mean, what’s my zodiac sign, how would I know? Tom?’ The lady at the reception desk, seen with intriguing distortion through the glass panel of the phone booth, appeared to have two sets of bosoms, one above the other; they undulated as she wrote in a ledger. ‘Gemini,’ he said, ‘I should think you’d be Gemini, whatever that may be.’ Somewhere a long way away, Kate crackled indignantly. This won’t do, he thought, this won’t do at all, this will all end in tears, this will.

  She wasn’t best pleased, he said to Tony, she was a bit stroppy in fact, and Tony was laughing, and filling up their glasses. You know, Tom said, you know I’ll tell you something, nothing is what you think it is, that nut lady of yours has a point though of course her particular point is right off target. But nothing is what it seems to be, not people nor places nor nothing. Now take Kate’s Aunt Nellie, that you met the other day, now you might think though you would be quite mistaken in thinking…

  And presently, Tony for some reason was very kindly giving him a hand into that inconstant car, and the motorway was humming again a few inches below. And his head was full of some very effective orchestra on Tony’s radio. And…

  Chapter Five

  Laura said, ‘And how is Tom?’ S
he looked at Kate across the restaurant table and thought, she is pasty, she doesn’t have the lovely complexion I did at her age, she looks much more like Hugh.

  ‘He’s fine. How’s Aunt Nellie?’

  Laura inspected her salad: the dressing looked doubtful. ‘Well, darling, one goes on hoping for miracles, but I don’t know… Poor Nellie, it is dreadfully hard for someone used to being active, and of course she will keep trying the impossible. She is going to be very dependent on me in the future, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ said Laura, startled. ‘It’s not a question of mind or not mind, it’s the way things have turned out.’

  She doesn’t, in a funny way, Kate thought. She quite likes the idea. What is it like to have a sister? I can’t imagine it. I don’t think I’m very good at imagining.

  ‘What an unusual necklace, darling. That’s new, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tom gave it to me. We found it in a junk shop.’

  It is quite nice, but it doesn’t go at all with that shirt, not that one must say so, of course. She has no colour sense, she never has been clever about clothes. I used to get her pretty things when she was a little girl and then she made a fuss about wearing them, it was all very tiresome. I can see her now.

  … Standing beside me at my dressing-table, I can see both our faces in the mirror, mine and hers, she is not much like me which is a pity. And she has got grass stains all down the front of her frock, it is really too bad. I scold her, I say I told you not to roll on the lawn in that frock, go and take it off and ask Mrs Lucas to put it to soak; she sticks her lip out, pulls a face, really she can look plain when she wants to.

  She has been threading beads. She wants me to wear this necklace she has made. She puts it round my neck, and I feel her sticky, hot fingers against me. I never like people to touch me, except – well except in the obvious ways. Children touch you all the time, they pat and paw and poke, it is something I have never much liked. I can’t help it, it is the way I am.

  I am tactful. I say what a lovely necklace it is, but it is a pity it doesn’t go with my frock – look, I say, look at the colours. I want Katie to learn to have nice taste, to have an eye for things. I say I know, why don’t you go and see if Aunt Nellie would like it, I expect she’d love it, Aunt Nellie hasn’t got as many necklaces as I have.

  ‘In a junk shop near the flat,’ said Kate.

  ‘Which of course I’ve never seen.’

  ‘Oh, Ma, it’s awfully grotty. It isn’t your kind of place at all.’

  ‘I offered, ages ago, to come and make it nice for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Ma, but honestly, it suits me fine as it is.’

  ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ said Laura graciously. She was wearing a new coat, and had stowed a couple of shopping bags under her chair. ‘I have had quite a successful morning,’ she went on.

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘And this afternoon I am meeting Barbara Hamilton. We are going to an art exhibition together.’

  ‘You ought to come to London more often.’

  Laura sighed. ‘Perhaps eventually, when one is less tied. Of course I sometimes think, eventually, of selling Danehurst. It will get too big. And if I hadn’t Mrs Lucas. Barbara and I have toyed with the idea of turning it into an Arts Centre of some kind. An Arts Centre for the county. The government would have to give us money, of course, and we would run it jointly, it would take time to get off the ground, but one imagines it in ten or fifteen years’ time being a sort of second Chichester. For art, though, not plays.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate.

  ‘There would have to be tremendous alterations, of course. We would get in some really top architect.’

  ‘In ten or fifteen years’ time you’ll be over seventy, ma.’

  There was a silence. ‘Possibly,’ said Laura coldly. She studied the bill. ‘I don’t remember having soup. I suppose we did. Tony Greenway has been on to me again. He is coming down at some point to have a look through Hugh’s papers, to see if there is anything that might be of any use for this programme. Nellie is very disapproving for some reason.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I don’t like the idea of someone poking around in Dad’s stuff, either.’

  ‘Not private things. Not letters. Just his work things. Dig notes and so on.’

  ‘Hmnn.’

  ‘I should imagine he’s queer, wouldn’t you?’ said Laura.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tony Greenway.’

  ‘I’ve not the slightest idea. What does it matter, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said Laura. ‘It’s just that I notice that kind of thing about people. Nothing to look so prim about, darling, I thought your generation was so outspoken…’

  In ten minutes, Kate thought, I shall be back in the museum. I shall work terribly hard all afternoon. This evening I shall see Tom again. I haven’t seen him now for – for five and a half hours.

  ‘… partly of course because one has always rather kept up with things, as a matter of fact I never really feel of any particular time in the way one is supposed to be of the time when one was young, whereas some people very much are, take Barbara Hamilton for instance not that she’d care to have it said but her I do see very much as a thirties person. Or your Tom.’

  ‘What about Tom?’

  ‘Oh, Tom is very much of now, isn’t he?’ said Laura with a laugh. ‘He really couldn’t be anything else. And now I don’t know about you darling but I have a lot to do, I shall have to rush.’

  One of William Stukeley’s contemporaries claimed to have had revelations of life before birth; the account was somewhat mystical and while including a convincing description of being suspended in a ‘sea of greenish liquid’ referred also to angelic hosts and divine choirs. Tom’s earliest memory was dull: he was walking with his father along the tow-path of a canal near his home; squatting down to inspect something on the bank, he slipped and plunged one foot deep into the soft mud below; the mud sucked and clung, he shrieked, his father hauled him up and wiped him down. How old he had been, he did not know; judging by the remembered height of a concrete bollard at the spot, which was still there, he must have been about three – the bollard had towered above him.

  Other memories were equally insignificant – and personal. Which led him to suspect that those autobiographies which so impressively tether the subject’s youth to the course of history are often either reconstructed or invented. If you grew up during a war, of course, or were in some other way inescapably linked to public events, then things would be simpler; you would indeed have shared some kind of collective experience and have bombs or loneliness or the proximity of famous people to prove it. But if you have the good fortune – or misfortune – to spend your childhood in peacetime in a politically stable country in modest, but not deprived circumstances, then memory has a certain timeless quality. One’s own life seems to run parallel to what is happening on the public stage, rather than being involved with it. Which, of course, is not the case. The winds of change blow on us all, conditioning a great deal more than how we dress or what we eat.

  Which made it unsatisfactory that the sharpest recollections were in that sense mundane. When was it that his schoolboy self had hurtled down a hill, freewheeling on a bicycle, the senses ablaze at the sight of a female thigh rising and falling alongside? Not just any female thigh, either, but that of his first girl, Lorna Blackstock, and what has become of her, goodness only knows. The bike is still in the shed at home; a more durable relationship. And when was it, sometime before, that he had sat in the kitchen, on a static summer afternoon, hot, suspended in time – forever three o’clock, forever twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen – reading a novel in which a larger world is suggested. On the fringes of consciousness, unexperienced emotions and preoccupations lurk; flies sizzle against the window; Mum comes in and fills a saucepan at the sink.

  Only in the more accessible past does history rear its head; one begins to read newspa
pers, hold opinions, take note. A Tom more ancestral to the Tom of today sprawls in a chair, listens to a bloke on the telly holding forth about the Americans in Vietnam, does not agree, argues subsequently with his father. And another Tom listens with a critical ear to discussion of incomes policy, of who gets how much for doing what, and sees that this is not a matter of abstract or academic interest, that one is going to be in there with the rest, and pretty soon too.

  All of which has led, somehow, to the Tom of today, of now, who would probably be surprised by Laura’s claim, and possibly affronted. Few of us, after all, feel obliged to accept an affinity with – or take responsibility for – our own day and age.

  Tom, walking down Tottenham Court Road, was thinking that Stukeley’s world – despite its physical discomforts – had a lot to offer a certain kind of person. His kind of person, he suspected. Given, of course, the right educational and social opportunities. A small cultural and intellectual élite largely known to one another; diversity of job opportunity. Of course, there was a lot that would not have done at all, but that could be said of any time. Undiscriminating acceptance of what you know will not do either.