The Road to Lichfield

by Penelope Lively

  Fine, she said, and indeed this curving leather sofa thing was very comfortable after trains and tubes, and the darkness was soothing, one could sit here and feel nothing, just watch this fantasy world displayed from one point of view and then another on the numbered screens there in front of you. Like Rashomon, she thought, the same event from different points of view, several-dimensional, very symbolic. Or the past itself, if you want to push the point a bit, which on the whole I think we won’t. I just want to sit, she thought, and think about nothing at all. This will do very well for half an hour, longer wouldn’t matter, all day for all I care, and tomorrow too.

  Monitor 1 is filled now with a blue-jeaned bum. Monitor 2 lingers on two huge men trolleying a slice of cardboard staircase across the studio floor. Elsewhere are framed the corner of a deal table, the top of a curtain with a microphone peering in top right like an inquisitive insect, Sir Walter Raleigh talking to a man with clipboard in hand, earphones clamped to his head. There is ceaseless chatter from the row of chairs behind. Graham’s voice says this is fourteen, take one, right? I’ve got a bit lost, and another voice says can I see them in shot for a second, please, fine, no, there’s a slight shoot-off through that open door, O.K. that’s nice. Are we going for a take? another voice is saying. Right, says the woman’s voice, we’re going for one, boys, mind that boom, Ken, O.K., then. And now someone is counting: going in twenty seconds, fifteen, ten, nine, eight, seven …. On the big central monitor we have Sir Walter Raleigh now, sitting writing at a table, and then a close-up of what he is writing or has written, authentic curly Elizabethan script, and now we cut to Camera One’s shot of the opening door, with gaoler coming in. The actors’ voices are loud and clear above the chat from behind – shot twenty-eight on three, twenty-nine on one, thirty on two, I don’t like that turn, I don’t like that at all, he’s too far out, thirty-one on one, the boom’s in trouble, the boom’s in a lot of trouble, all right, that’s it, we’ll have to go again, cut. The central screen blacks out, at either side are seen again those fretful sections of some hidden larger scene – man with clipboard instructing a costumed actor, the back of someone’s head, a still-life of jacket slung across the arm of a chair.

  A note for Lady Agnes, says the woman’s voice from behind, could she take another half pace forward after her entrance or she’s out of shot. And I want a close-up in there for reaction – have you got that, Liz? Graham’s voice says we had some flare there didn’t we? just a bit? and other voices ask each other if there was flare, did anyone see any flare? And so the chat goes on in the darkness, like the dead squeaking and gibbering in the streets or however it goes, Anne thinks. Except that that’s a fallacy too, pathetic or otherwise, the dead don’t squeak or gibber, they are dead and that’s all there is to it.

  In the central monitor now is her father, sitting on the side of an Alp with pipe-smoke streaming in the wind, and alongside but a size smaller on Camera Three is her mother but what she is doing is not at all clear, there is some fuzziness there, perhaps that is what is meant by flare. Camera One has Betty Mansell, as in the photograph on her daughter’s mantelpiece in Gloucester, a strong-featured woman staring thoughtful from the screen. And there are Graham and Anne herself, on bikes, pedalling away down a road, plump-thighed teenagers, and to their right is Shirley Barron, but she is middle-aged, not young, glumly wiping cup-rings from her coffee-table. And at either end there are blank screens, several. What are they for? Anne wonders, and seems to remember Graham saying something about not using all the cameras today.

  Something has been going on that she has missed. O.K., says the voice behind, I’ll buy that. Thank you, studio, that was a good take. We’re going over to the bedroom scene now, right? Get ready to block, please. And there is a wild whirling and flashing on the monitors, a world of uncertainty until everything settles down again and we have now a four-poster bed around which people swarm on ladders, and a girl in a nightdress sits on the edge while cameras consider her from different angles.

  A number of girls in nightdresses, in fact, both in and out of them, and women too. There is the claustrophobic attic bedroom in which she loved and fought with Patrick, and there is the Leckford road room, with Don naked bending to take off shoes and socks which brings a remembered gush not of desire but of irritation. He does not know, and one cannot say, that it should be done the other way round. And there is the Langdale Villas bedroom, in London, and beside it the Cuxing one, but Don is not to be seen in them, or perhaps he is blotted out by boom or flare or one of these other problems they have around here. And now, despite all her resistance, there is David on the bed at Starbridge, turning towards her. He is on all the screens now, one after another, there are two banks of his face, row upon row, black and white and full colour. She sits with tears streaming until suddenly Graham is leaning over her saying well that’s it, Annie, we knock off now, hope you haven’t been too bored.

  He ordered wine. ‘Graham … I thought you weren’t supposed to drink.’ ‘One glass won’t hurt. Anyway, I can’t let you get sloshed alone, it’s not gentlemanly.’ ‘I’m not going to get sloshed.’ ‘You might as well, Annie – you’ve been sitting there weeping, haven’t you – you might as well go the whole way. Come on,’ he said, reaching out suddenly, patting her hand. ‘Come on, cheer up, let’s not have a performance, he wouldn’t have cared for that at all, would he?’

  ‘You know something?’ she said, half an hour later. ‘You’re really quite nice. I never used to think that. But you really are.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot. It’s good to know one’s appreciated at last.’ He grinned across the debris of the meal. ‘Or is it that I’ve improved with time, do you imagine?’

  ‘I don’t think people do. Or at least – oh, I don’t know one way or the other. Tell me something – tell me what mother was like.’

  ‘Mother? Heavens, Annie, you knew her as well as I did.’

  ‘I’m wondering,’ she said, ‘If I ever noticed her. I suppose that seems an extraordinary thing to say.’

  ‘Not entirely.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I see what you mean. You were always very busy, weren’t you – as a kid, wrapped up in the things you were doing, and then bustling off at eighteen to get educated, working, getting married, all that …’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s not fair. I always …’

  ‘ … Popped back to see they were O.K.? Of course you did – I’m not criticising, Annie, you did a lot better by them than I did.’

  ‘You were always mother’s favourite.’

  ‘Probably she felt there was more to worry about there. She was a bit scared of you – you were as sharp as a pin.’

  ‘Was I? I never felt like that.’

  ‘People never feel like they are,’ Graham said. ‘Or so I’m told. Come on, we’ll have another half bottle.’

  ‘What did she and father talk to each other about? That’s what I don’t seem to have any idea of. I can’t even see them,’ she said, ‘when I look back. Talking.’

  ‘The house? Holidays? You and me? Isn’t that the kind of thing husbands and wives talk to each other about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. Well, that’s something you know more about than I do. My information is a bit stereotyped – picked up from scripts mostly, plus the odd bit of observation most of which I daresay one interprets quite wrongly. That’s not what’s talked about, then?’

  ‘It’s maybe what’s talked. It’s not what’s talked about.’

  ‘Ah.’ He re-filled both their glasses, took the last cigarette from his packet and sat looking at her across the table.

  ‘Mother …’ she said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing. I think she was happy, insofar as people are.’

  ‘Was she? Yes, perhaps. I remember her being up, or down, but not as though it went very deep.’

  ‘I think perhaps it didn’t. She kind of absorbed things, mother. Backgrounds, people. Maybe that’s why you feel you didn’t kn
ow her. She had a habit of disappearing, as it were.’

  ‘Yes, she did, didn’t she? You’re right. She was always there, but not determining things. Being determined by. Depressed if it was a nasty day; cheerful in nice places.’

  ‘Negative,’ said Graham. ‘Dad, on the other hand, was positive.’

  ‘Was he happy, do you imagine?’

  ‘That I don’t know. That’s where I dry up. I don’t think I ever noticed him enough. What do you think?’

  ‘I’m glad he had this Betty Mansell person.’

  ‘Glad?’ he was startled now. ‘I thought you were rather upset about all that.’

  ‘I was at first. I’ve come to see it a bit differently, somehow.’

  ‘Why, Annie?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. One thing and another. I went to see the daughter, by the way, I never told you, Shirley Barron.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Quite nice. A bit depressing. I think she’d want to come to the funeral. Or at least be told about it.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Graham. ‘Would she?’ He sat fiddling with his glass, frowning a bit.

  ‘We’ve got away from mother again.’

  ‘Yes, we have, haven’t we? Something else I’ll tell you – she didn’t ever know about Dad’s lady, and she couldn’t have done, either.’

  ‘Couldn’t have done?’

  ‘She couldn’t for one moment have believed it. That sort of thing wasn’t inside her world; it was what went on in books, or in other people’s lives. And Dad was very much inside her world. So he needn’t have worried, really, if he did. He wasted a lot of feeling guilty, if he did feel guilty, which being the kind of bloke he was, I imagine he did.’

  ‘Can you waste feelings?’

  ‘Oh Lord, you’re being as intense as when you were seventeen, Annie. I can’t go through all that again – have a heart. It was wearing enough at the time.’

  ‘I was quite wrong,’ she said. ‘You’re not nice at all.’

  ‘Well, it was worth waiting for. You’ve smiled. First time today.’

  ‘Oh, Graham …’

  ‘For God’s sake – don’t get all weepy again now. Here, have some more wine.’

  ‘I’ve had quite enough. Sorry. There, I’m organized again.’

  ‘Talking of which, I suppose we have to organize for Friday. Don’ll go up with you, presumably.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll meet you out at the house, then, shall I? I’ll be driving up first thing. Is there anything else we have to fix – things in the paper, letting people know, all that?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all that.’

  ‘And we’ve got to think about the house at some point. Do we sell it or what. Or do you want to hang onto it for the time being, Annie?’

  ‘No. We’d better sell it.’

  ‘Sure? I just thought maybe …’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing I want it for.’

  The restaurant was empty. In a corner, the waiter totted up figures, glanced across at them from time to time. Graham said, ‘I’ll have to go – it’s past three. Not that things won’t grind on without me. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘See you on Friday.’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘You’re quite sure about the house? I wondered if perhaps …’

  ‘Then don’t. Please, Graham.’

  ‘O.K., Annie, enough said. You know best, I imagine. See you on Friday.’

  ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the lunch.’

  She watched him pad away down the street on rubber-soled shoes, hands in the pockets of faded blue cotton trousers, his hair a little thin behind, very slightly stooped. He walks like father, she thought, just a bit, I’ve never noticed that before. The thought warmed her a little, sustained her on the journey back to Cuxing.

  Fourteen

  There is an element of mercy about the afterlude to death. Like the ritual mourning of primitive societies, the official requirements take up time and energy and place what has happened in a context. Anne, absorbed in the formula of letters, telephone calls, notification of this person and that, found herself carried almost painlessly through to Friday morning, seven o‘clock, breakfast in the kitchen at Cuxing, rain coursing down the windows, Don in unfamiliar black suit checking the map.

  ‘We shan’t need that. I know the way.’

  ‘Just thought there might be a possibility of dodging Banbury. Shall we get off, then?’

  She walked out of the house, wearing an uncomfortable, unbecoming grey dress that had seemed the only appropriate garment, lurking unworn at the back of the wardrobe for years as though balefully awaiting just this occasion. The day reached ahead like a ladder to be climbed. There should be some drug, she thought, for days like this; a prescription that knocked you out so that you could do what has to be done and feel nothing, wake up twelve hours later with it all over, like an operation, kindly faces looking down at you saying, there, it’s done with now, out of the way.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Don called from the car. ‘It’s past eight, Annie.’ She picked up a brown envelope from the mat, addressed to herself, and stuffed it unopened into her bag.

  Rain pelted the windscreen. Somewhere to the left of Oxford Don said, ‘The weather’s not doing much to lighten the occasion.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘it all fits.’ ‘I’ve booked dinner for us at a place in Warwick this evening on the way back. I thought it might cheer you up.’ ‘Have you, darling?’ she said, touched. ‘That was nice, thank you.’ She looked sideways at him, leaning a little forward to peer through the clogged windscreen, intent upon the road, and felt shrivelled with guilt, as though to toothache were added a sharp bout of arthritis. Is there any limit, she wondered, to the feelings that can be piled one upon another? Does nothing blunt anything else? Oxfordshire gave way to Warwickshire and rain to high winds that set the landscape heaving.

  At Starbridge they waited for Graham in the sitting-room, awkward as though distanced from each other by the oddity of the day and their own appearance. Anne said, ‘Goodness, when did you last wear that suit? It’s not the one you had at Oxford, is it?’ And Don replied no, not since London, as far as he could remember, it was never one he cared for. And as she thought of Graham and wondered how he would have seen fit to appear for today, there suddenly was his car and Graham getting out of it wearing a dark green suit with all the unease of a small boy rigged out for the first time in school uniform. ‘I say,’ she said, ‘you do look peculiar.’ And Graham wrenching at the too-tight waistband muttered something about having to borrow it from a friend and she began to laugh. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘how idiotic, why do we feel we have to dress like this …?’ They stood there, the three of them, outside the front door, with Don saying something about all going in his car rather than taking two, and for an instant she saw this same group seventeen years ago, in the same place, again costumed for the occasion, but bridal then, festive, and with her parents at either side, her father with grey top hat in his hand, looking (in recollection, at least) thoughtfully at Don. Weddings and funerals, she thought, (and christenings, except that we never paid too much attention to those), why compound the business by making people wear fancy dress? Or is it so that people forget the enormity of what has happened … She was gripped with the knowledge that she would never talk to her father again, person to person, daughter to father, as somehow she had never been during the weeks of his illness and senility. She got into the car beside Don and sat bleakly silent, staring out at the wind-ravaged trees and hedges. Graham had gone into the house to telephone the funeral parlour. They were to meet the hearse at the church.

  ‘Who exactly,’ Don had asked the night before, ‘will be there?’ And she had said, well, hardly anyone except us three. We knew he wouldn’t have wanted a fuss, a big affair, you know … So I’ve written to cousin Edward and he’s coming over from Stafford, and then there are a f
ew local people who were friends, I got in touch with Mr Hammond, he’s someone father saw a lot of over the last few years and he’s told anyone else who ought to know. Mrs Ransome who used to work at the house sent flowers, apparently, that was nice, wasn’t it? That’s all, really – oh, except a Mrs Barron, she’s someone whose mother was a family friend, she’s dead now, though, the mother. And a man called David Fielding – a schoolmaster father used to go fishing with.

  And Don had said ‘Yes, I see,’ and turned once more to the crossword.

  The hearse stood in fat black prosperity in the lane that led to the church. ‘If you’re ready, sir,’ said the man to Don (so obviously the responsible, head-of-family figure …) ‘perhaps you’d like to lead into the church behind us.’ And Don nods and says to Graham, I think you two should go ahead, and now Anne sees the others standing about uneasily by the porch, cousin Edward and the rest, and Shirley Barron in a dark blue dress and hat. And David. ‘Right’ says Graham, and takes her arm, and they walk together up the churchyard path behind the coffin (like the wedding, she thinks again, absurdly, I’ve done this before …) and into the church, past cousin Edward and the rest, without looking or speaking.

  The church is Dec., with Perp. window on the north aisle and traces of Norman arch at the crossing, intruded upon by Victorian restoration work and alterations to the height of the nave at some point unspecified. The font, which Anne can see as she turns to walk down the aisle, is fifteenth century, carved with the seven sacraments, the figures ritually defaced in Cromwellian times. The hassock upon which she should kneel to pray, if she were in the habit of praying, has been embroidered in rather unpleasing colours by a member of the Mothers’ Union, and the screen at which she sits staring, so as to look ahead and not at the pews to the right, into which the rest of the congregation now quietly file, is another nineteenth century intrusion, of heavy oak.