Next to Nature, Art

by Penelope Lively

  Greg, in a fit of goodwill, has volunteered to take care of the mid-day meal. He sets the refectory table and opens a lot of tins and unwraps several loaves of bread and a few packets of margarine and as he does so it occurs to him that it will be a hassle if things go on like this. No one, so far as he knows, has done anything about replacing the Filipino girls. However that is not his headache since his plans for the immediate future, let alone any other kind of future, are fluid. He might take off at any moment. Or on the other hand he might not. Greg believes in personal adaptibility. You want to be flexible in your approach to life, if you’re going to live creatively: flexible in outlook, flexible in relationships. He fills jugs with water, and puts them on the table – which reminds him that if these guys are going to be given any kind of a send-off tonight someone had better get in some drink, which means the usual whip-round: Toby does not include this kind of thing in the Framleigh budget. Today’s goodwill, Greg benignly decides, will take him so far as seeing to the whip-round and running the minibus to the off-licence in Woodbury.

  “I gave two pounds,” says Jean Simpson. “I mean, frankly, that’s more than enough – it’s not as though I’m going to get through a whole bottle of wine personally. But you have to show willing.”

  There is an atmosphere, that afternoon, of unfinished business. People do not seem able to settle to anything. Some return to the studios, and then drift out again. Others walk in the park, but there is something melancholy and lowering about the day, despite the sun: the trees stand heavily in the landscape, nothing moves, the place is stuck in the endless lethargic present of an English August afternoon. Those who have wandered off down the woodland ride, or in search of the cascade and the temple, change their minds and come back: they feel oppressed by all that torpid greenery. “It’s a funny thing about the country,” says Jean, “but it’s when you’re not in it that you most want it, if you see what I mean. When you are it can seem a bit pointless.”

  Even Jason is infected. Kevin has gone out for the day to see his grandmother. Jason says to Paula, accusingly, “I’ve got no one to play with”.

  “Play with the tadpoles in the pond.”

  “That’s no good,” Jason snarls, “they don’t play back, do they?”

  “Play in your den,” says Paula, heading off upstairs.

  “How can I play with myself?” bawls Jason. But Paula has business of her own; besides, she has always maintained that children are no problem so long as you don’t let them run your life. Jason, who vaguely knows his mum is not like other people’s mums, and also vaguely sees advantages in this (penknives, agreed mutual non-interference …) drifts back outside, to the old kitchen garden, where he spends a while hitting the wall with various sticks, until they break.

  Greg inspects bins stuffed with bottles, raucously priced, and picks out some Spanish and some Algerian and some nice cheap stuff that has no label. “These don’t have a label,” he says to the guy behind the cash-register, who indicates a wire tray: “You want a label? Plenty of labels in there.” Greg, intrigued, forages and selects Chateau Something 1969. The guy slaps the labels on the bottles and the bottles into a box, wrong end up in some cases so as to get them all in.

  The afternoon seeps away. It seeps into an evening that is cooler and brisker and in which people begin to feel more vigorous and perhaps more charitably disposed to one another. Tessa gets out her long, white pin-tucked and sashed and frilled Laura Ashley dress that she has been saving up for tonight. Sue washes her hair. Keith has a restorative whisky from his emergency kit because he is feeling edgy; he does not feel much less edgy afterwards but an element of aggression is added, which might be interesting. Mary Chambers phones her husband to say that she will be home by lunch-time tomorrow. When her husband mentions – in passing and without rancour – that there does not seem to be anything much in the fridge for supper tonight she refers him quite tartly to the local fish and chip shop. Those on kitchen duty get a meal together, rather more enthusiastically than of late. Greg decides to make a wine cup. He sends Nick out into the garden to gather herbs and searches the cupboards for a large enough container. Eventually he finds a vast china soup tureen ornamented with a rather inept picture of Framleigh; lettering on the other side informs that the tureen was presented to Sir Peter and Lady Standish in 1922 on the occasion of their silver wedding anniversary by tenants of the Framleigh estate. Humming to himself, Greg chucks in the contents of six bottles of plonk followed by half a bottle of brandy and various spices he has found at the back of one of the kitchen shelves. He adds, in a burst of generosity, the remains of his personal bottle of scotch and some gin he has observed earlier in Toby’s study. Paula’s cooking sherry is a creative afterthought, along with a squeeze from a withered lemon found on the windowsill.

  Nick comes in with a handful of green stuff. He is doubtful about some of this, though, and consults Mary Chambers, who discards sprigs of camomile, ground ivy, herb robert and lavender, allowing only the mint and the thyme.

  And when at last the late summer dusk arrives there is an agreeable sense of expectation about the place. The french windows of the Common Room are open to the terrace; a cloth has been put on the big table and glasses set out. There are bowls of crisps, and the brimming soup tureen and a back-up supply of bottles over in the corner. Toby brings the old wind-up His Master’s Voice gramophone through with a pile of 78s – Cole Porter and Gershwin and Louis Armstrong. The girls, who have never seen such a thing, are fascinated. Naturally, there is no stereo at Framleigh. Actually, the survival of the HMV is thanks to Greg, who retrieved it last year from a consignment of objects being taken to the new antique hypermarket in Warwick.

  People gather. Glasses are filled. Paula is the last to appear. She slowly descends the main staircase, and those facing the door break off whatever they are doing to gaze for a moment. She certainly looks rather magnificent. Her hair is piled up in a vaguely Grecian way, with a good deal of it escaping in twists and coils; she wears a sea-green long dress, also indirectly classical though in fact made in Bombay and still faintly impregnated with sandalwood (that smell, for ever after, will remind one or two people of Framleigh); the cut and texture of the dress make it clear that she has disposed of the problem of how to wear a bra under it by not doing so. She pauses for a moment under the broken pediment of Kent’s double doors and looks round. “I could do with a drink,” she announces.

  The night is still warm. People move out onto the terrace. One of Lemniscaat Farms’ stockmen, doing something to a calf in the park, looks across the ha-ha and up the prospect and sees them drifting there in the half-light; they seem some gilded product of the house itself, a manifestation of its style and age and detachment from real life – laughter, the tinkle of glasses, groupings and re-groupings.

  “Do you know,” says Jean Simpson, “I think this stuff is making me a bit woozy. Mind, I’ve never had a strong head.”

  “Writing …” says Greg, “being a poet … is ultimately self-destructive. If you get what I mean. Art is essentially an act of sacrifice.”

  “There’s someone being sick in the downstairs loo,” says Jason.

  “Hey!” says Paula, “what’s all this? I thought you had a wife and kids stashed away somewhere in south London?”

  “I’m not crying,” says Tessa, “I’ve got something in my eye, that’s all.”

  The telephone rings, unheard. The gramophone is playing in the Common Room and anyway most people are out on the terrace, or elsewhere. Bob is showing Sue how to do the rhumba, a dance she is too young to know about. Sue is in fits: she hadn’t realized how nice Bob is and wishes she had done more potting. Tessa still has something in her eye. Others are combining in various ways, or wandering around, or simply drinking. Greg has had to replenish the soup tureen. It is having an interesting effect: Jean Simpson is trying the rhumba now, and Sam, who has been so self-effacing, has become noisy and assertive. Toby, feeling maybe that the good name of Framleigh has be
en salvaged, is genial. He moves around, talking to people. He talks to Mary Chambers. He hopes she feels she has got something from the course and says that she really does have quite a bit of talent, she must carry on with her painting. Course members, when told this, are usually overcome: they bridle and get coy. Mary appears to take it quite calmly: she does not even seem appropriately surprised. Yes, she says, she intends to. There is something about the way she looks and speaks that is faintly disconcerting: she is not, Toby realizes, awed by him or by Framleigh, any longer. Of course, this has happened to people before but it is odd that it should have happened to this rather mousy little woman. Not willing to get further involved, he moves on.

  Elsewhere, Paula says “Ow, you’re squashing me”.

  It is dark in the grotto, and scarcely less so outside. The Framleigh woods flutter and rustle. So does the old mattress which is kept there for picnics, Paula explains. Keith had wondered … He says “Sorry”.

  “That’s better. O.K. – carry on.”

  Paula is every bit as marvellous as he expected, and more so. He cannot see her very well, which is a pity. At least only her face, and those breasts. It is what she says that is a bit disconcerting. She is awfully bossy; she keeps instructing. He has always been in favour of the bloke, well, taking the initiative. Paula doesn’t seem to share this view. It is all go: this way, that way, on top, underneath. And he is uncomfortably aware of, in the background, a splitting headache induced presumably by that god-awful drink. “You’re fantastic …” he murmurs, “Paula, I … I …” I love you, is what he has normally said under these circumstances, but somehow he has a feeling it wouldn’t go down all that well. “I think you’re the most marvellous person,” he ends, lamely.

  “What?” says Paula. “Look, shift your leg – no, the other one …”

  “There’s two men,” announces Jason, “in posh clothes. With a posh car. And they want Toby. Why’s Sam lying on the floor like that?”

  “Of course,” Lowther explains, “you’re missing a lot not seeing it by daylight, but at least you’ll get some idea of the ambience.” He stands, with Sir Henry Butters, in the hall; he indicates the staircase “… Kent’s design, of course.” Lowther has been doing a bit of homework, and his tone is ever so faintly proprietorial, though deferential also, “Pevsner thinks it particularly fine. This way, sir – I imagine Standish is somewhere about”.

  “Bit of a party going on, by the sound of it,” says Sir Henry. He is not averse to a bit of a party, as it happens, and he has seen through the open door of the Common Room a rather pretty girl standing at the table, winding up some old-fashioned gramophone. Probably just as well Dorothy decided not to come this time. He enters the room. “Hello there!” he says. You don’t want to seem stuffy, with people like this.

  “I want,” says Nick, puce to the hair-line, “to talk.”

  Toby frowns. “My dear, that sounds so ominous. Talking, in my experience, never does anyone any good.” He lays an arm round Nick’s shoulder. Beyond the rose-clad wall of the swimming-pool enclosure there are footsteps, a scuffle, a smothered giggle, and then silence. “Just Bob,” says Toby, “keeping his hand in. Look, I ought to get back and see everything’s O.K ….” He kisses Nick. “Why not let it ride, whatever it is that’s bothering you? You’ll feel differently in the morning.”

  “… our Chairman, Sir Henry Butters,” says Lowther. “Your girl gave you the message all right? Sorry it was rather short notice but Sir Henry and I had a talk with one or two other members of the Board and it seemed a good idea to have another informal meeting as soon as possible, and since Sir Henry was still in the area …”

  Toby shakes hands with Sir Henry. He suggests they go through to his study and have a drink.

  “Heavens, we don’t want to be stand-offish” says Sir Henry. He moves towards the table, and the soup tureen, and Tessa. “Why don’t we join the party for a bit?”

  “… and get that fool Sam out of the way” Toby hisses, to Nick. “And get the whisky from my study. And get Paula.”

  Sir Henry finds the studios awfully interesting. He has a sister, as it happens, who paints a bit. He is very amused by Bob, too, and commissions a couple of pots for the boardroom. In fact, as he tells Toby, and Bob, and Nick, and Greg, they already have a small Hockney in the boardroom, and a Kitaj in the directors’ dining-room; Bob will be in good company. Bob chuckles. They have this designer fellow re-jigging all the offices, too, top-notch man, apparently, though Sir Henry admits with a laugh that some of the colour-schemes seem to him a bit far-fetched, but there it is – you get what you pay for. He loves the stables and looks respectfully at the back of Framleigh, from the terrace, and peers into the darkness of the prospect. He has another whisky and chats to Greg: he tells Greg about the differences between being English and being American, tapping him on the knee from time to time to emphasize a point. Greg is simultaneously telling Sir Henry about his current project, so neither hears much of what the other is saying, which is fine. Sir Henry likes meeting all sorts of people; he gets on with people; he is interested in people. This is one of the reasons – as he often tells younger colleagues – he is such a successful banker.

  Lowther hovers, thinking about pheasants. Toby hovers too. From time to time he and Lowther exchange a perfunctory remark; neither is certain, any more, if they are in league or at war.

  Paula arrives, suddenly, on the terrace. There she is, in the long floaty dress (to the back of which are stuck a few leaves and bits of twig), her hair tumbling from its Grecian arrangement. Sir Henry looks away from Greg. He knows a good-looking woman when he sees one. He rises, holding out a hand. “Ah, Mrs Standish?”

  Paula smiles graciously. “Paula,” she says, “please …”

  “Pound-note voices,” says Bob. “I love ‘em. You can smell the brass. Wonder if old Toby’ll pull it off.”

  “Perhaps,” says Keith, whose headache is now compounded with rising aggression, “they’re in the market for hand-crafted honeypots as well.”

  Bob stares at him. Over the beard his eyes twinkle. He laughs, a rich genial laugh. He claps an arm round Keith’s shoulder, still laughing. “Well,” he says, “well, well …”

  “What’s going on?” demands Jean Simpson. “Why doesn’t someone wind up the gramophone?”

  Sue is curiously patched about the face: one cheek is pale, the other bright pink – denoting, apparently, high emotion. She says, “Toby likes boys. I saw him with Nick, just now, by the swimming-pool”.

  “Yes,” says Mary Chambers, crisply “some men do. Presumably you knew that.”

  “Yes,” moans Sue, “but not Toby …”

  Mary looks at her. “Why should that upset you so, Sue?”

  Sue studies the floor. Eventually she says, “I don’t think Toby interacts very nicely with other people. I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to sort of let someone think you particularly like them, I mean in a particular way, when you don’t really. I think that’s cheating, sort of. Actually I think it’s selfish.”

  “Yes,” says Mary, “it is.”

  “Actually, I think they all behave a bit selfishly here.”

  Mary nods.

  “Even if they are artists. In some ways they behave even more like other people than other people do. I mean, either you behave exactly as you like, or you don’t.”

  “Doing your own thing …?” murmurs Mary.

  “Well, yes, I s’pose so … But really, that’s what children do, isn’t it? And people spend all their time telling them not to. Parents. You have to teach them to have manners and be considerate and unselfish. If you just leave them to behave naturally it doesn’t do. Actually,” says Sue hotly, as the theme gathers strength, “the world wouldn’t work if everyone did exactly what they felt like doing.”

  Paula tells Sir Henry all about her work and about herself and about what she has done and what she intends to do. Paula rather likes older men, though of course Sir Henry isn’t really her sort of p
erson at all, but he is an old sweetie and awfully interested in her things. Sir Henry pats her knee from time to time; she makes him think of opera for some reason (that one about the people in an attic in Paris, the girl on the sofa, all that …) and portraits in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of pretty, flimsily dressed women just called “Celia” or “Clarissa”. Women quite unlike one’s wife, or sisters, or the wives of one’s friends. And the candid stares of girls in French Impressionist paintings and Edwardian postcards of actresses in enormous hats – gay, racy people set aside from real life. “My dear,” he says, “you must let me know if there’s anything one could do to help. Now this question of extending the studio …” Standish, of course, is a bit of a creepy fellow, but still …

  “I wonder,” Lowther says delicately, “if maybe you and I should look over a few figures, er … Toby. Sir Henry seems quite happy for the time being.”

  Toby nods. He looks, thoughtfully, at Paula and Sir Henry; he seems to be interested by the way in which Sir Henry is patting Paula’s knee, rather than resentful.

  It is night now: deep, still, summer night. The Framleigh woods have almost ceased to creak and rustle. The great mantled black slugs are at work in the herbaceous border and a cat from the village is crunching something by the cascade. The terrace now is empty of people and inside the house it is quieter. Sam, in a distressing condition, has been put to bed by Keith. Jean Simpson is telling someone that her husband sometimes doesn’t understand her. Bob and Tessa are nowhere to be seen. Sue has gone to bed. On her way up the stairs she passed Toby and was aware of something very curious: his proximity no longer inflamed the senses – his arm was anyone’s arm, his thinning hair was any thinning hair, his faded jeans were any faded jeans. Paula and Sir Henry, at Toby’s suggestion, have gone over to Paula’s studio to have another look at the soft sculptures; Sir Henry is telling Paula about his little place in Sardinia and Paula is saying she has always loved abroad and she finds she works so much better in hot climates and she gets these foul colds at Framleigh in the winter. Toby and Lowther are talking, intently. Greg is describing to Keith his early poetic struggles and the Creative Writing Fellowship that he is almost certainly about to be offered and Keith who no longer cares enough about anyone or anything even to be maddened by Greg is morosely finishing off what drink is still around.