Mercifully, this unsatisfactory line of thought is interrupted by Bob announcing that it is time to down tools and go over for some nosh.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” says Paula. “Driving’s one of the boring things I’ve never got around to doing.”
Keith runs through the gears of the minibus and adjusts the mirror. He doesn’t mind at all, as it happens, though come to think of it there is something a little curious about jumping with such alacrity at the chance of an expedition to some supermarket.
Paula delves in the pocket of her skirt. “Where’s that bloody list? The thing is, Greg’s stuck into a recording session and he just can’t risk losing the creative drive by breaking off.”
Keith nods sympathetically. Actually, his response to Greg has been growing more negative by the minute, these last couple of days; he could well be, Keith suspects, a right jerk. Poet or not.
“And apparently we’re cleaned out of just about everything. Christ! Domestic hassles – how I loathe them!”
“Not to worry,” says Keith. He swings the minibus masterfully over the ruts of the Framleigh drive.
“Right,” instructs Paula. “No, I meant left.” Keith reverses the minibus into a gateway, a trying operation. He is reminded, just for an instant, of his mother who has the same irritating inability to give directions. He glances sideways at Paula’s long tawny hair, hanging over her red silk shoulders, to reassure himself.
Paula puts on a pair of very large sun-glasses that swamp the upper half of her face, and talks. She talks all the way to Woodbury, where the supermarket is, and of course what she has to say is fascinating, being all about (or mostly about) art – her art, specifically – and the doing of it and how it makes you feel and what the hang-ups are. Not everything relates directly to art – some of it is more specifically about Paula herself – but in a sense that is neither here nor there, since, as Paula says, art is what she is for, quite simply. Once or twice Keith puts in a comment but these never really get taken up; sometimes it is as if Paula did not hear and at others she digests the comment into what she is in the process of saying, so that it seems to turn into something different. Talking to Paula is like talking to someone with a heavy cold: her sensory responses are curiously muffled.
The supermarket is as other supermarkets. And yet, of course, it is not, because to tour it in Paula’s wake, trundling the trolley and stowing into it the items plucked from the shelves and flung back by Paula, is an interestingly heady experience. Heady because Paula makes it so, stalking down the aisles tall and contemptuous, manifestly slumming, manifestly above this kind of thing. Eyes follow her; the eyes of ordinary Woodbury housewives. And move from her to Keith, in his safari jacket, a bird of the same feather. There are no other men of his age in the store: they are all in offices or on building-sites or in factories or selling thins to other men. This is freedom, of a kind.
Paula drops a pack of lagers into the trolley. “I’m parched. We’ll stop and have a drink on the way back.” At the check-out, she stands while Keith and an assistant stow the purchases into carrier bags, and then, as an afterthought, finds a cheque book in the pocket of her skirt. She has, Keith observes, the most enormous handwriting, great loops and swirls that entirely cover the surface of the cheque. He wonders, madly, if she might ever write him a letter.
It is quite a haul getting the bags back to the minibus. Keith does two journeys and Paula does one, bearing the lightest of the bags. In fact, she does not have to carry it all the way as a bloke suddenly appears offering to help; it is interesting that while Paula is neither frail nor elderly there is something about her that makes people – some people – feel instinctively that such a person shouldn’t have to do things like lug heavy shopping.
They set off back to Framleigh. On the way, there is also the bank to be visited and a builders’ merchant where Paula gets putty and off-cuts of mirror and other tools of her trade. By the time they have finished the expedition has taken a couple of hours, the afternoon is well on, and Paula says again that she is parched. “There’s a place we can stop off on the way. A sort of ruined church thing.”
The ruined church, Keith recognizes at once, is in fact a monastic building, the shreds of an abbey. He has always had rather an interest in architecture and likes to look things up and put names to this and that. The abbey, what is left of it, crumbling and shrouded in greenery, agreeably unpreserved, the archetypal ruin, looks to him thirteenth century though he spots the ghost of a romanesque window in one wall and the massive stump of an early pier. He mentions this to Paula, who stares at him, and says the texture of the stone is gorgeous, and as a matter of fact she used it as the model for some rather intriguing ceramic work last year.
Beyond the ruins, away from the road, is a grassy space. “Let’s sit,” says Paula. Keith opens two cans of lager. The sun comes out. “Heaven,” Paula lies back. “God, what an afternoon! You were an angel to help, Keith.”
It is the first time, he realizes, that she has used his name and simultaneously, she reaches out and pats his hand – a warm, disorienting touch. The view of Warwickshire swings a little.
He glances briefly sideways. She has rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and pulled the neckline back, to get the sun. Her eyes are closed. His own hand rests like a leaden weight upon the grass, a couple of inches from her thigh. He swallows. Things are getting really rather rough.
“You know, Framleigh does have the most extraordinary effect. I don’t know when I’ve felt so … so, well …”
“Liberated?” murmurs Paula.
“That’s it,” says Keith gratefully. He lifts his hand, and puts it down again. Paula shifts, rubbing her back against the grass. Keith shifts also, uncomfortable in various ways.
All of a sudden Paula sits up. “Christ … There’s something inside my shirt!” She flaps her hands wildly behind her back, then yanks the shirt from the waist of her skirt. “Oh God, what is it?”
Keith investigates Paula’s bared back. There is nothing to be seen except skin, a single elegant mole placed off-centre left of the spine, and the straps and fastenings of a lacy black bra. He reports.
“I felt something crawl,” says Paula, “I know I did.”
“Well …” Keith begins. He takes a breath. He reaches round her and puts a hand on her breast, the fingers under the rim of her bra.
“Hey!” says Paula. She sounds amused.
She turns round. She looks surprised but in no way offended. “What’s all this about?”
“I thought …” Keith begins, stiffly.
“Oh, God, did you?” says Paula. “Oh no, there really was something crawling. But look here, if you’re feeling like that …” and she puts a hand firmly on his crotch. “I never like the idea of anyone suffering in silence. And I like you – you’ve got a lot of hang-ups but basically you’ve got a lot going for you.”
Keith looks round wildly. There is nothing to be seen or heard except birds, insects and distant traffic. He says, in disbelief and surging hope. “Here?” Things are pretty well unquellable now, in any case.
“O.K.” says Paula, amiably. She undoes her shirt.
The couple, appearing suddenly from round the side of the abbey, are elderly and inclined to tweeds. The man carries some kind of guide-book. They glance towards Paula and Keith, nod and smile. Paula does up her shirt again in as leisurely a way as she had undone it.
The couple peruse the exterior of the abbey. The man produces a camera and there is a lot of fuss about taking some pictures. They have some kind of discussion and then sit down, fifty yards or so away. Sandwiches are brought out.
Paula gets up. “That” she says “looks like that. Christ – look at the time, anyway. I’ve got to clear up the studio before the evening session.”
Walking back to the minibus behind her, Keith sees something on the sleeve of her shirt. Moving. It is a small furry brown caterpillar. He reaches out and flicks it off. Paula says, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
They drive back to Framleigh. Paula talks, about much the same kind of thing as on the outwards journey. Keith drives too fast, in a state of painful diminishment.
Chapter 7
At the moment when Keith is examining Paula’s bared back Toby is in the gun-room at Framleigh putting a call through to the man in London. He has already had a conversation with someone at the Saudi Arabian embassy, the second over the last couple of days, which has not been particularly satisfactory. He is passed through switch-boards and secretaries and achieves, eventually, the clipped tones of his quarry. He mentions one or two points he forgot during their last conversation.
“Our chairman and his wife happened to be in your area last night,” says the man in London.
Toby makes sounds of regret. “They should have dropped in.”
“They did. It seems the place was in pitch darkness and there were funny noises coming from inside. At least that is what I have from Lady Butters.”
Toby contemplates, for a few moments, the ceiling of the gun-room. “Experimental theatre has become something of a feature of the Centre’s activities. I envisage – once the expansion programme gets properly under way – a permanent stage in the new workshop area and of course the appointment of a Drama Fellow.”
“Fellow?” says the man in London. “I see.”
“The kind of thing, of course, to which your organization’s name could be attached. The Harper Fellowship.”
“I see,” says London voice, again.
Toby doodles on a pad: a decorative arrangement of spirals and arabesques. “I should perhaps mention that my financial advisers are in favour of an adjustment to the figure we were talking about last time.”
There are discreet murmurings, down there in London. “I’ll be free in half a minute, Mandy. In which direction, Mr Standish?”
“Downwards,” says Toby. “We might be talking of, er, one million three. That sort of thing.”
“Well,” says the man in London, “this could remain an on-going conversation, I suppose. But before we go much further there should be a high-level inspection, I feel. We may come back to you on this, Mr Standish. Goodbye and thank you for calling.”
Toby hangs up. He studies, for a moment, a framed photograph of his father and some other men, slung about with guns, standing amid the heaped carcasses of birds. The walls of the room are indeed lined with such photographs, some of them of considerable antiquity. Toby, whose awareness of the cash value of age is perhaps even more highly developed than that of others, reflects upon the commercial possibilities of these, and makes a mental note.
Sue, Tessa and Jean Simpson, packed into Mary Chambers’ mini, drive into the north Cotswolds for the afternoon. They plan to have a look at one or two of the villages and generally potter around. Nice, says Jean, to have a bit of a break from the rarified atmosphere. She sits in the front with Mary and talks about her husband’s promotion. Sue and Tessa, in the back, think their own thoughts: Tessa is riven by the worry that she might be pregnant and the marginally greater worry that Bob has said nothing about meeting tonight; Sue is busy despising Jean Simpson and determining that never never will she get like that. She will never marry a man in frozen foods and have two children and a pin money job and a part-share in a holiday flat in Newquay. She will, eventually, meet a man who is uncannily like Toby and live with him somewhere abroad; he of course will be involved in something creative and she will help him with it. She will grow her hair long and have a permanent sun-tan and never go near Coventry for the rest of her life.
Mary Chambers drives along sinuous roads through a landscape in perpetual movement, a kaleidoscopic sequence of scenes: field rising to tree-crested hill, cottage glowing in the sun, black and white cows brilliant against the green. Colours dissolve before her eyes as light ebbs and flows – from gold to fawn, from blue to grey, from the ink-dark of stooping summer trees to the brilliance of new grass. Nothing stays the same; the visual world, which should be the one stability, slips away as foxily as time itself. The spire of a church rises apparently from a cornfield, poppies flare at the roadside, rooks beat their way from horizon to horizon.
“Pretty country,” says Jean Simpson. “You could get past that lorry now, there’s a straight bit coming up. Sorry – back-seat driving.”
They arrive at a small market town. “Touristy,” says Jean. “Let’s stop and have a poke round, all the same. The shops look nice.”
The place is clogged with cars. Cars crawl in search of parking spaces, hover at likely spots, double-park while their occupants, safely glassed in, stare fixedly ahead. The old market square, now the central car park, is full up. Mary cruises round once, then again. Jean spots a car backing out; Mary, advancing, arrives at the empty space at the same moment as a woman driving a Jaguar. “Oh, quick …” says Jean. The cars halt, wheel to wheel. The woman gesticulates. Mary’s passengers stare, grim, at the elderly man and girl in the Jaguar, who glower back. The two cars sit; if either advances they will graze bumpers; behind, someone hoots. “Look at her blue-rinse,” says Jean, “don’t give in, Mary.” Mary, too, feels a surge of resentment; the woman, beyond her window, is mouthing something. The car behind hoots again; Mary says desperately, “We can’t just go on sitting here”; Jean stabs with her finger at the Jaguar – “We got here first” she mimes, as to the deaf. And the Jaguar, suddenly, shoots backwards, the driver glaring. Jean says, “There! It’s always just a question of holding out.” Mary, feeling cheap, drives into the parking space.
The town is full of people: the contents of all those cars, of course. It is doing good business, which since that has always been its raison d’etre is perhaps not so inappropriate as some might think (Jean, for instance, who continues to deplore the crowded pavements). Business, though, nowadays, is in batik from Indonesia and woven table mats from Korea and jeans made in Hong Kong and Spanish pottery. Very few of the things sold are necessities of life; it would be quite hard to find a loaf of bread.
Tessa buys a see-through muslin top (made in India) and Sue a jar of wild rose, elderflower and honey conditioning cream. Jean lingers over Japanese paper kites – dragons and serpents and exotic birds – but decides they are too pricey and anyway the kids would have them ripped up in five minutes.
They find themselves in an art gallery selling pottery and prints. The pots, they agree, are not a patch on Bob’s; Tessa does not join in the discussion but stares at the pots, throbbing. The prints are gaudily abstract affairs of blobs and spirals (though entitled “Thames Valley Studies”) and prompt Jean to remark that they remind her of Toby’s things. Sue says violently that they aren’t a bit like. Jean stares again at the prints and then, coolly, at Sue and suggests that that is a matter of opinion, perhaps. Mary, promoting harmony, asks Jean if she likes Toby’s work.
“Well, I mean, they’re brilliant, of course, aren’t they …? But I s’pose not, really, since you ask. I mean, I wouldn’t want to have one – put it that way”.
Sue, icily, interjects. “They cost seventy-five pounds each, his lithographs.”
Jean, at once impressed by the sum and annoyed by the implication that hence they are not for the likes of her, is silent.
“What about Paula’s sculptures?” asks Mary.
“She trained in London and on the continent,” says Jean, after a moment. “It says so in the brochure. And she’s had exhibitions. Mind, I think they take a bit of getting used to, but they do sort of grow on you in a way. And of course she’s such a personality. She’s got such style.”
Mary points out that that on its own wouldn’t make her a good artist. Jean concedes that this is so, but frowns. Sue, who appears now to be joining ranks with Jean says, “Everyone at Framleigh’s different from ordinary people. That’s what makes it all so special.”
Jean agrees that they are certainly different. “More free and easy, I suppose, is what it is. And they don’t sort of take much notice of each other, do they
? They all do what they want. Mind, I do think that child is let run wild, and I’ve yet to hear him said no to.”
Mary wonders if not taking notice of other people is a necessary part of being an artist. The woman in the corner of the gallery, behind the cash desk, looks at her, and then attends to a customer. Half a dozen pottery mugs are wrapped up, and the cash register records the sale. The woman is wearing a brown smock, floor-length; you can see she is not just a shop assistant.
They emerge from the gallery. Jean and Mary would like a cup of tea; the girls decide to have a wander round. Tessa longs to confide, but cannot bring herself to do so; they talk about jobs, and holidays, and Sue’s jar of conditioning cream, thinking, both, of other things.
Jean and Mary, who have nothing in common but their age (forty-two) enjoy a Cotswold farmhouse tea and talk, a little warily, of families, of jobs, of whether or not Jean should buy for her husband a batik tie displayed in the restaurant which sells, apart from tea, a few tasteful products by way of fabrics and home-made jams. Jean decides not to buy the tie. She tells Mary about various other weekend courses she has attended; an ornithological one, last year, was interesting. The ornithologists, too, were a bit of a law unto themselves, though not in quite the same way. The tea has encouraged candour; she eyes Mary and wonders if she, too, finds that however super your family is you need to get off on your own occasionally? Mary, noncommittal, murmurs. Jean sighs; “I wouldn’t half mind,” she says, “being Paula. Put myself first and no nonsense. But you’ve got to be doing something special before you can do that, haven’t you? Nothing special about booking dental appointments all day, is there?”
Mary replies, thoughtfully, that people need to have their teeth seen to. “How do we know,” she goes on, “that what Paula is doing is special?”
Jean frowns, again. She busies herself with a fair division of the bill and says eventually that well, we don’t really, I suppose, but she is an artist, there’s no getting away from that, is there?
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