Tom met Kate outside the study door, coming from the kitchen. ‘Oh, hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘I don’t seem to have seen much of you.’
‘No.’
‘A funny kind of day.’
‘Yes. You’ve found someone to talk to, anyway. The fair girl.’
There was a silence. Tom said, ‘Shall we go in here? It seems to be the only room not crawling with people.’
The room was lined with glass-fronted book-cases, which reflected the garden – the lawn and the flower-beds and the yew hedge brightly overlaying the sombre ranks of Antiquity, Proceedings of the Prehistorical Society, the Victoria County History. From time to time figures walked across: Tony, Sue. Kate picked up a piece of pottery from the desk and stood running her finger round its rim. She said, ‘Perhaps it’s better if I go back to the flat alone.’
‘Is that what you think?’
She said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Is it what you want?’
She turned away and stared out of the window. ‘No. But I think it’s what you want.’
There was an insidiously ticking grandfather clock in one corner of the room; on one wall, a collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century prints of Avebury; perched on a filing-cabinet, a Roman amphora. Kate said, ‘Isn’t it what you want?’
He wanted to put out a hand, touch her arm. But it would be the wrong kind of touch; she would know that well enough. ‘It may be the best thing.’ Lame; appallingly inadequate.
There was a silence. Kate said, ‘I imagine it’s not so much anything I’ve done as what I am?’
‘Kate, look I…’
‘Don’t, just don’t say you’re sorry.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’ That’s right, he wanted to say, get angry, it’ll be therapeutic, a purgative. And I deserve it.
But she didn’t. She stared across the desk at him; there was hurt in her eyes, and something else as well. Something disconcerting; a detachment, a look of assessment.
‘I’m too much to take on,’ she said. ‘Aren’t I? You did love me – that was true, I know that – but I’m difficult and cross and awkward and when it comes to the crunch it’s more than you reckoned with. And there’s Ma.’
‘Kate, it’s you who’s obsessed with your mother, not me.’
‘Quite, but that’s something else you don’t want to get involved in.’
‘Let’s not argue,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
‘You don’t want a nasty painful scene that might lodge in the mind?’
‘I don’t expect you do either.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t. But I’d rather have that than not look things in the face.’
‘Ah. Well, yes, I suppose there’s a case for that.’
‘A case! Oh, Tom.’
I wish this was over, he thought. I wish it was next week, or next year, even.
‘You’re an evasive person, you know, just a bit,’ she said.
‘Evasive?’
‘You duck things, where you can. Issues. Responsibities, even.’
‘Such as?’
‘I’m sorry – having said that I can’t think of anything specific. It’s a state of mind I’m talking about, more. You’re a very uncommitted person.’
‘Go on,’ said Tom sourly. ‘This is interesting. A good bout of character assassination is salutary, I don’t doubt.’
‘I haven’t got anything to lose, have I? I’ve lost it already.’
There was nothing he could say to that. Or do. Except avoid her eyes.
‘I don’t mean to assassinate. Just understand. And you are, you know. You’re against things rather than for things, and even when you’re against them you just turn your back and walk away. You’re a looker-on. You keep out of things. You step out of the way and make a wry comment.’
‘It comes of growing up in a temperate climate, I daresay.’
‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean,’ said Kate. ‘Quod erat demonstrandum.’
‘All right,’ he said after a moment, ‘you’ve got a point. Maybe I’d have been different in more strenuous circumstances. A child of the times?’
She shrugged.
‘Or perhaps it’s an innate tendency? I still think the climate may have something to do with it.’ His head was throbbing now; a timely reminder of last night, and serve him right, too. ‘You should have been here yesterday evening – I drank too much of your mother’s whisky and harangued her about the same kind of thing.’
‘About the climate?’
‘Sort of. Mercifully I can’t remember too much now.’
There were voices outside the door. Kate said, ‘You’ll go back with Tony tonight, then?’
‘I suppose so. But let’s meet up in a week or two, Kate – let’s have a drink and see what…’
‘Mmn. Maybe. I may have my holiday then.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
The door opened. Tony said, ‘Can I come in? I’m rather thinking this room might be better than the drawing room to do the sequence with Paul Summers – the rest of the stuff we’d hoped to have done up at the barrow. Yes, sitting at the desk might be nice – Mike, what do you think?’ People gathered in consultation; Laura appeared, concerned about dust and untidiness; Kate vanished.
Tom went into the drawing room, there being clearly no alternative but to subject himself to the Hamiltons. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ said Barbara Hamilton. ‘Do let me give you some coffee.’ He sat in gloom on the sofa, guilt and depression now added to the many ills of the day. From through the open door came the sound of Tony’s voice, telling people what to do. Presently it was replaced by Paul Summers saying loud, carefully phrased things about Wessex and Hugh Paxton and the state of mind of British archaeologists in the nineteen fifties.
I’ll go and see the Lakers for a bit, he thought. Or something. Bugger off for a week or two.
Kate came in, said, ‘Oh, I thought Aunt Nellie was here,’ and went out again at once.
Through in the study Tony said, ‘Cut.’ Then Paul Summers, ‘Sorry, I got myself tied up there.’ ‘Not to worry, we’ll go again.’
Tom conversed with Barbara Hamilton and her husband and marvelled at his own ability – hitherto unsuspected – to do this without being in any way aware of what they were talking about. From the garden came a curious wooden knocking noise; someone laughed. He looked out of the window.
Sue and a presently unoccupied BBC man were on the lawn, stooped over a long wooden box from which they were taking the component parts of, apparently, a croquet set. That knocking noise was accounted for. Sue, setting up a hoop, made some experimental shots; there was laughter and banter. Barbara Hamilton said, ‘Croquet – what fun! I had no idea Laura had a croquet set, do let’s have a game.’ Tom followed them onto the terrace.
There was argument about the placing of the central stick. Sue said, ‘This was Tony’s idea – he noticed the box in that old summer house at the bottom and thought it would be nice to set it up. He thinks it adds to the house’s Edwardian atmosphere.’ She giggled. ‘I must say I’m glad I wasn’t an Edwardian, I’m hopeless at it.’ She swung wildly at a ball, missed, and sent it skidding down the lawn through the gap in the yew hedge. ‘Oh God, now where’s that gone?’
Barbara Hamilton said, ‘Of course the thing is to cheat wildly, that’s half the point. Darling, I’ll take you on. You and – er – Sue against me and Tom. Or Kate – wouldn’t you like to play?’
Kate, standing now on the terrace, shook her head. Tom said, ‘Actually, I’d prefer really…’
‘Oh, come on, be a devil.’
He took the proffered mallet; presumably one could do this kind of thing in a semi-trance as well.
Nellie had fled from the house and its activities. Insofar as it is possible for anyone in a wheel-chair to flee. She had taken herself to the small orchard at one side of the drive, to the front of the house
, and sat there under an apple-tree, reading. After a brief well-being in the middle of the day she felt, now, disordered again, unwell. She wished all these people would go away. Trying to concentrate on the book, she was disturbed by an odd noise: an odd, familiar yet unreckoned-with noise. She closed the book, listened. Began, after a minute or so, to trundle herself round the outside of the house towards the garden.
In the study, Paul Summers completed, finally and satisfactorily, his piece. Tony said, ‘Lovely, let’s have a break now.’ Laura, who had been watching from the door, made remarks of congratulation and approval. She had not, in fact, listened, being taken up with thoughts prompted by the sight of Hugh’s books, murky behind the glass of the case, Paul Summers’s tanned face and the greyish clouds racing in reflection across the surface of the books: a not entirely random sequence concerned with the possible sale of some books which after all nobody read nowadays, sunshine, the price of air tickets to Corsica, and this villa of the Hamiltons in which apparently there was room for one more. But now, breaking into this, there came a perplexing, evocative noise: she turned towards the door, frowning. From the garden were heard a thwack, a feminine squeak, a burst of laughter. Tony said, ‘Oh Laura, is it all right, I suggested they put up that old croquet set before we do those shots of the house – it adds a certain something.’ She walked through the drawing room and out onto the terrace without replying.
How dare they! They had no business, it really is the limit. Nobody’s touched the croquet things for years, not since… well, not for ages and ages. I never did care for it, a silly game that brings out all the worst in people.
She stood on the terrace. The Hamiltons, Tom, the fair-haired BBC girl – knocking the ball now, inexpertly, turning with a cry of anguish and bumping into Tom so that he has to put a hand up to steady her. And – coming round the side of the house, one hand trundling the chair wheel, the other held up to shade her eyes against the sun which has suddenly blazed out, low in the sky above the garden wall – Nellie.
They are playing croquet: Hugh, Laura, the Sadlers. Laura’s idea. She has been all day in one of those states of heightened animation – vivacity which could topple over any minute into something else. A mood long familiar, to those who know her best, and dreaded. The croquet is unwise; a game for people of steady temperament only.
I stand at the side of the house, watching. It is good to get outside, all week we have been shut up in the study; so much to do, so much sorting, so much writing. Hugh says, ‘God, Nellie, what would I do without you.’ He looks up now, from the lawn, and waves. And Laura, as he does so, misses her shot.
And turns on him. He thinks – we all think – she is going to hit him. His arm comes up across his face. My stomach turns. He says, ‘Laura, what the hell are you…’ Perhaps she did hit him, it is hard to see. And now she is shouting, awful things, frightening things, about me, some of them. Everybody stands there; it is as though time had stopped. I say, ‘Laura…’
And she goes into the house. She looks as pretty as a picture, her pale hair and that blue dress. Her face I cannot see.
‘Sorry,’ said the girl. ‘Was that your foot? And now I suppose I’m going to get clobbered.’ And she yelped as Tom whacked her ball away into the flower-bed. ‘Dreadful game,’ said James Hamilton. ‘Red in tooth and claw. Is it me now?’ Tony, standing on the step to the terrace, restless, called out, ‘We’ll have to put a time-limit on this, I’m afraid – I want these garden shots before we have any more weather disasters.’ And Laura, an edge to her voice, was saying something about could people not send balls into the border, it’s not doing the flowers any good.
Kate said, ‘Aunt Nellie?’
And now they all look across at the wheel-chair, where she is oddly leaning to one side, her head at an angle, as though, everyone thinks for a moment, she has dropped off to sleep.
And then Laura is pelting across the lawn towards her, saying something that no one catches. And the mallets are dropped. And Barbara Hamilton says, ‘Oh no…’ And Tony, looking across the lawn at Laura, whose face is turned now away from Nellie with an expression no one, not even Kate, has ever seen before, says ‘Where’s the phone? Not to worry, Laura, it’ll be all right…’
But it is not all right, at all.
Chapter Fourteen
Tony said, ‘Oh, we retrieved a fair amount. Enough, anyway. It won’t be what I’d have liked, but there it is. God, of all five-star disaster weekends… I went to the funeral – it was the least I could do, I felt. Laura was shattered, you know. Completely shattered. Funny – one would never have realized she was so devoted to the sister, it didn’t somehow come across. But she must have been. Like a zombie – we had a bit of a chat but I don’t think she even knew who I was, really. A wretched business. By the way, I gather you and Kate…’
‘Yes.’
‘Permanently?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to hear it. Nice girl. But I daresay in the end… These things happen, anyway. I understand she’s staying down at Danehurst for a bit – prop up Laura and so forth. Look, Tom, there’s something I’d like to have a talk with you about, if you could spare an hour or two one evening.’
The summer, which had so recently, it seemed, begun, was fading into autumn. It was hard to remember, now, those bright green spears of spring that first weekend at Danehurst; the sharpness of the young corn in the downland fields, the vibrancy of the garden. Now even London, more or less impervious to seasons, suggested the onset of other things – withered grass in the parks, heavy, drooping trees. And Stukeley was all tied up, pretty well, bar some final re-writing and chores like index and bibliography. Work, as things had turned out, had been the best antidote to – well, to a great many uncomfortable emotions that lurked, like dormant bacteria, to spring into action when the conditions were right. Guilt and regret and misgivings. And, from time to time, relief and a faint sense of exhilaration. Things move on; not always for the worse.
He received in the post one day a large envelope from Japan. Inside was a stilted note – from which of Mr Tsuzuki’s group he could not make out – and three coloured photographs. In one, he stood outside the Cornmarket branch of Marks and Spencer, flanked by two beaming Japanese girls, against a window display of red, white and blue beachwear ingeniously arranged to form the cross and diagonals of the Union Jack. In the second, he was posed alone outside a petrol station near Burford. Framing his head was a sign, lettered in glowing orange, drawing attention to cut-price petrol: the words ‘Four Star Reduced’ hung around his right ear. The petrol station itself, gaily flagged, was moored like a giant pleasure-steamer between thatched and mullioned stone cottages. The third photograph showed himself and Mr Tsuzuki, both grave-faced, watching the morris dancers. Tom was holding Mr Tsuzuki’s raincoat and some photographical equipment and looked like a priestly acolyte in attendance at some bizarre religious ritual.
His days in the British Museum were numbered now; wasting away like the meagre remains of his grant in the Midland Bank. The expiry of both, one felt, merited some kind of celebration – an initiation ceremony perhaps, the emergence of economic man after his long and expensive apprenticeship. Other cultures do these things better.
As it was, the events were marked by nothing more notable than a large bill from the lady who had typed the thesis, and a letter from the Bank in which a faint tone of threat was veiled by the deference due to a client of no account (in every sense) but incalculable potential. Tom wrote to his mother to expect him home for a prolonged autumn holiday, to the employment exchange in his home town, and to the Lakers.
‘You never did tell me about your Jap friends.’
‘It would take too long.’
‘Cherry was asking after you.’
‘Ah. Give her my love. I thought I’d look her up at some point.’
Martin was engaged in the restoration of a derelict manor house in one of the more picturesque villages. The house, formerly t
he property of a landowning family who had gone to seed in the thirties, converting estates and valuables into cash and yachts, was a mere shell with hints of its vanished charms. The village had decayed with it, due to some legal tangle preventing the family from selling cottages, which in consequence were rented and unrepaired. The legal problems were now cleared up, but galloping disintegration had put off buyers for several years. Now, apparently, the whole lot had been acquired by a Dutch businessman, and was to be painstakingly restored. Tom, for a week or so, joined Martin on the site, helping out with the more unskilled tasks. Once, the new owner arrived to see how things were going. The stereotyped vulgar tycoon that Tom had expected turned out to be a slight, diffident man, deeply concerned with craftmanship and deferential towards Martin. They toured the building, locked in discussion of stone and timbers: no expense was to be spared, no trouble was too great. The Dutchman’s fortune, apparently, came from the manufacture of a new kind of aluminium alloy used in aircraft construction.
‘Stay on a bit,’ said Martin at the end of a week, ‘since you’re at a loose end. You’re just beginning to pick things up – that paving wasn’t half bad.’
‘It’s tempting. But I think I’ll push off home.’
‘Anything in the offing?’
‘Not a lot. There is one thing. I’ll have to think about it.’
A period of reflection, he had thought. A time for taking stock. He walked about the town – saw it with eyes that were both of now and of then. Accompanied by other, younger Toms, he observed and remembered: the cinema, scheduled for demolition, had acquired a certain period interest (if there wasn’t already, there presumably would be, a Thirties Society); it was also the place where he had brazened his way into his first X certificate film. The enormous Batts Road primary school playground was not so at all: a small puddled area of grey tarmac, merely. The heroes of yore, the wits and blades of the second year sixth, were men with mortgages and life insurance and evenings spent in front of the telly. Observation of how things are was contradicted by knowledge of how things once appeared to be: where, in that case, did the truth lie? Is the world as we see it, or as we have known it? A confusing point, he thought, and one that presumably perplexes others too.
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