Getting the
first computer upstairs had not been quite as unproblematic as they had
imagined. There were curves and corners
and narrow spaces and odd bits where it was hard for both of them to
reach. But they succeeded, and decided
at that stage not to push their luck too far, but to enjoy their freedom and
see how they got on. 'Let's give the
adults time to settle down,' they said, displaying that sound grasp of human
psychology which is instinctively present in the young and gradually removed by
education and the example of their parents, who, poor loves, have totally
internalised educational doctrines (even if they're not teachers) and believe
them to be the truth and not simply a set of devices for subjugating children
to the wills of their elders.
They had
just concluded that a second computer was going to be necessary, because the
noise-level of their disputes over the single one was likely to give them away,
when they heard the sound of their mother being helped up to bed.
Instantly,
they behaved like all heroes in the best children's books. They flung a spare blanket over the computer
that was in use, covered it in addition with discarded underwear and other
clothing, so it looked just like a normal part of a child's bedroom, and hopped
into bed. Just in case they were
inspected, they lay down, closed their eyes, tossed the regulation three times,
muttered in their feigned sleep and began to breathe deeply. After ten minutes, they sprang up,
bright-eyed, and went about their business, delighted to have deceived the
woolly senses of the adults. Well, this
was almost true. Nigel had sprung up,
but Jeremy was not particularly used to red wine, and his snores had been the
genuine article, and had in fact contributed to saving Nigel from a fate worse
than insomnia. Anyway, safely escaped
from the land of Nod, they set about carrying out the second part of their plan
and in next to no time had both computers up and working.
At this
point, it became evident that whilst the spirit was willing, the flesh was
weak. Jeremy, who had drunk
considerably more than Nigel, had to go for a pee. Nigel's suggestion that he should do it out of the window was not
well received. Instead, there was to be
a concerted expedition, braving ghosties, ghoulies and long-leggitty
beasties. In the course of this, and
fortunately on the return journey, a floor-board gave way. Naturally, Nigel's first reaction was to go
back to their bedroom and conceal all evidence of computers under a cloak of
invisibility made up of Mickey Mouse and Dennis the Menace T-shirts, which
done, he went for help.
'You
destructive little monkeys!' said Charles.
'You weren't playing about, were you?'
'No!' said
Nigel, with righteous indignation born of the rare conviction that he was, for
once, speaking the truth. 'We'd just
gone to the loo, and were on our way back when it happened.'
'Go to the
loo in pairs, do you?' said Charles, sternly.
'In houses
like this, yes. You never know what you
might meet. Headless ghosts!' said
Nigel, standing up for himself because he could sense that Charles was just
playing a game.
'More likely
to be legless in this place,' muttered Jessica, as the rescue party moved
off. Jeremy in fact looked legless when
they found him, sitting up to his waist in the floor, with a considerable
amount of wood-dust all about him.
'It's like
that Beckett play, with the woman up to her neck in a heap of sand!' said
Charles, trying not to laugh. 'National
Youth Theatre production of Happy Days!
How did you get into this?'
'Don't ask
him stupid questions, Charles,' said Jessica, 'otherwise, the minute he gets
out he'll show you how he got in by stamping on another worm-eaten floorboard
and doing it again.'
Richard,
meanwhile, was doing his comforting-the-injured-victim-while-
the-fire-brigade-cut-him-free bit. He'd
found an aged sweet in his pocket and was picking the fluff off before he gave
it to his son. However, his son refused
it - politely - partly because he didn't actually like the flavour, and partly
because, by the time it had been de-fluffed, he had been released from
captivity. He hadn't really been caught
at all - he'd just not had anything to put his feet on except the plaster of
the ceiling below, and he didn't think it would make a good impression if he
put his feet through it while attempting to get out. Charles congratulated him on his good sense, after he had pulled
him free, and complained to his father that his offspring were really rather
too well-fed.
'I'll speak
to my wife about it,' said Richard with mock-sternness. 'In fact, come to think of it, as we're up
here and making a noise anyway, I'll look in and make sure she's all right.'
He went off
to do so, while Jessica shooshed both the boys back to their room (she
mercifully stayed outside) and Charles examined the damage.
Anne was
still asleep, breathing heavily, her face a little pinched and drawn, as if she
were thinking heavy thoughts. He stood
and looked at her and remembered other times that he had watched her sleeping,
and the emotions he had felt. Desire -
very often. More often than he had done
anything about it. After all, they had
both been so very busy, and there was only time for so much in the day - Anne
said so herself, very often. Perhaps he
should have taken less notice of her.
Protectiveness - yes, he had often felt that, when she slept and he was
awake. But when he tried to put it into
practice, she called it an attempt at domination, or thoughtlessness about her
wishes, and he could see what she meant, but only afterwards, only ever
afterwards. Love? Pride?
Had he felt those? Funny, he
knew he had felt those when he stood over the beds of his children, especially
when they had been small, and still his, before they became their own people,
when they were still dependent on him, when they were still lost in the big
world of noise and light. He had been
proud of having produced them - well, having helped - and proud of his deep and
instinctive emotions about them. He had
been proud of the tears that came to his eyes when he looked at them. If that wasn't love, then what was it? He carried on looking at Anne, waiting for
the tears to come to his eyes. They
didn't. Then he went out and closed the
door very quietly, and only then did he start to cry, just a few drops. He knew that those tears were for him, and
for his marriage. He rubbed them away
with his fingers, and sniffed a little.
Then he went downstairs.
Jessica was
alone in the kitchen. Richard was
suddenly reminded of those parties of his youth, where the evening dissolved
into a kaleidoscope of experiences, and it was vitally important to be alone
with X, so that you could make a rendezvous with her, which you didn't dare to
do in anyone else's hearing, in case she turned you down, or in case they
invited themselves along as well, and if you didn't find yourself alone with X
on that particular night, then it was the end of the world. Finding yourself alone with her was as much
a matter of luck as good judgement. It
depended not least on the capacity of everyone else's bladders, and on judging
the queue for the loo, and noticing who'd gone out into the garden and who
hadn't and who with. And even if the
puzzle of ferrying the missionary and the cannibals across the river in the
small canoe actually worked out, you still had to find the right words and get
them out. But here was the opportunity,
handed to him on a plate.
At that
moment, Charles came in, took the last opportunity off the plate and ate it in
one gulp.
'Look at
these!' he said. 'Look at these!'
He flung a
whole set of papers on the table.
Clouds of dust arose - the ordinary dust of ages, and the fresher
sawdust-like product of beetles, woodworm and dry rot.
'Charles,'
said Jessica, 'before we even begin to investigate these insanitary objects,
there is a vital question to be asked and answered.'
'Of course
we're having some more coffee - but I fancy it with whisky. The Armagnac's a little too civilised for
what we're likely to have before us.
What's the consensus? Lagavulin,
Tomintoul, Scapa Flow? The hell with
it, why should we have to choose? Let's
get them all out, have an impromptu
whisky tasting to keep our brains and our palates alert! Jessica!
The crystal tumblers!'
'To hear is
to obey, o Lord and Master, from whose nether orifice the daystar sends its
effulgent rays!' said Jessica, doing as he asked and giving him the two fingers
as she did so.
'Charles,' said Richard, cradling the
chocolatey Tomintoul, 'why don't you just tell us what's in these papers? I mean, we all acknowledge that you're a
master showman, can date a fresco at forty paces and all that - you don't have
to humiliate us with our ignorance.
We're very curious, that's true - but I, for one, am feeling too
knackered to actually keep up with what's going on unless it's spelled out to
me very simply.'
'Have some
espresso coffee, Richard,' urged Jessica, putting down the aluminium container
beside him. 'Pure black intelligence at
this time of morning.'
'The reason
I can't tell you what's in these papers, Richard, is that I don't bloody
know. I've just found them. Really.
The fact that I've been thinking about these things for as long as I
have does mean that I can probably give an interpretation faster than you - but
why don't you two just leaf through the bundles and tell me what it is you
find?'
'My God,'
said Jessica, 'Frank Winston's been murdered!'
'What date's
that clipping?'
'I don't
know, Charles. Oh yes I do. There's something on the back about the Cup
Final being held at Wembley for the first time. That makes it 1923. One
of the books I edited was all about memorable Cup Finals. Do you want to know about the one where the
goalie played with a broken neck because substitutes weren't allowed? Or the first one where substitutes were
allowed? Or the first one where a
player was sent off?'
'I'd rather
know about Frank Winston's murder.'
'Of Street
End Cottage - isn't that the name of that ruined one where you said the
caretaker was camping out? - leaves a wife, Mrs Lizzie Winston, also Street End
Cottage... what the hell was she doing back with him again? You told us she got shot of him because he
insisted on his conjugals - well, that was your interpretation, anyway - and
here she is, large as life, no longer living in the Big House, though she may
well still have been working here, and there he is, small as death, with his head
smashed in by person or persons unknown.
Come on, Sherlock, what have you got to say for yourself?'
'Nothing at
all - yet. Richard - pick a document -
any document - '
'Lady Violet
Fitzwarren-Beacham-Warner has much pleasure in inviting blank to a séance to be
held at Fitzwarren Court on February 19th, 1924, at which the renowned American
spiritualist, Dr Arthur J. Spalter, will attempt to contact the spirits of the
dear departed. She'd gone doo-lally. She and her trolley had parted company. An inspection of her crockery cupboard would
have revealed a grave shortage of mugs.'
'A vivid,
but not a profound, comment. Sorry to
be so pompous, but it's my normal reaction to extreme flippancy. Any more?'
'My God,
she's doing it again, the week after!
And the week after that! There's
a full-scale pack of these things! You
could play bridge with them!'
'I'll tell
you one thing, Richard - séances don't come cheap. It's not the beer and crisps that cost - it's the medium.'
'You edited a book on it?'
'No - one of
my aunties was so heavily into it, trying to get in touch with her dead husband
(though Lord knows why, they'd never communicated particularly well when he was
alive, so perhaps that was the reason) that her offspring had to have her
certified while there was still enough money in the coffers to pay for the
funeral.'
'In this
case, though, there was no heir around to protect his patrimony - at least, no heir who could make himself
known - and the money was certainly going fast. Here's something which even I have no trouble in interpreting
despite my weakened state: A cheque drawn for a rather large sum in favour of
Dr Spalter and marked "Insufficient funds. Refer to drawer."
Things must have come to a pretty pass when old-established banks refuse
to honour the cheques of respectable county families.'
'Don't you
be so sure about that, Richard, things aren't always what they seem. A returned cheque can be a very effective
way of welshing on a debt which is basically unenforceable. The recipient of the cheque is very careful
not to make a public fuss about the matter, because that would deprive the
family of whatever credit it might still enjoy and make it absolutely certain
that the creditor won't get any of the funds owing to him. What he does is agree to take the money in
instalments, without interest, and meanwhile the family books the villa in Nice
for an extra month.'
'Not much
question of the villa in Nice as far as Lady Violet was concerned. The financial situation seems to have got
worse. Here's a letter from her to her
stock-brokers asking them to liquidate her stocks and shares on the
instructions of Dr Spalter and make the proceeds available to him for
investment on the American stock-market.'
'And the
date?'
'February
1929. Ouch.'
'Ouch
indeed, Jessica. One in the crystal
balls there for Dr Spalter, I feel.'
'I thought
we weren't allowed to be flippant, Charles?'
'You
aren't. I am. Satisfied? Jessica, what
have you got there?'
'It's a
private letter. Shaky handwriting. I don't want to read it. I'm scared.'
'Jessica, I
think you'd really be the most suitable person. Richard or I might bring some cynicism to the expression of
emotions which would be inappropriate and could even be offensive.'
'I'm sorry,
Charles. It gives me
goose-pimples. It's like looking into
an open wound. I'm not scared of the
sight of blood. It's that damply shining
stuff under the skin that I can't stand - the stuff you have to wipe over
repeatedly to get rid of the last traces of grit or glass, before you can close
it up. I don't want to go that deep.'
Charles took
the letter from her, held it nearer to the glass-cased candle, and began to
read:
'My dear
Marjory, The doctor has confirmed my diagnosis. There is no hope at all.
However, he has assured me that if the pain increases, as it inevitably
must, he will increase my dosage of morphine correspondingly, and that if the
pain should become unendurable, I shall not have to endure it. In recent years I have suffered from great
despair, and even doubted the existence of God, or the afterlife. This was my reaction to the cruel deception
practised on me for so long. However,
as I approach the divide, I have one great consolation in the knowledge that I
shall soon be with my dear dead Harry again.
In the past few weeks, he has come to comfort me almost every evening
and has stayed with me for a while, holding my hand, often until I fell
asleep. You would think that the dead
remain just as they were when they died, but Harry has told me that this is not
so. He himself looks a fine, healthy,
well-set-up young man in his early thirties, just the way he might have been
now if he had been spared. That is one
of the mysteries of the spirit kingdom, to which Dr Spalter most definitely did
not have the key. I am not a vengeful
woman, but I cannot help seeing it as a sign of retribution on someone who swindled
me out of what little remained of the Fitzwarren family fortune, that he
himself has lost virtually everything.
Perhaps I was gullible, but a brief vision of my dear dead Harry at that
time led me to try any way I could to get in touch with him. I am grateful to my cancer, for it means
that I shall be reunited with him sooner than might have been the case. I must close now, as it is nearly the time
when he comes to me and I do not wish to keep him waiting.'
There was
silence in the kitchen, except for the sound of Jessica's tears falling on the
scrubbed deal table. Richard blew his
nose noisily to conceal his emotion.
Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, the
way one does to give pinched flesh relief, as if he'd been wearing rather tight
glasses to read the letter. But he
hadn't.
'Well,' said
Jessica, 'at least she saw through the deception before she died. It's a consolation for me that she wasn't
permanently taken in by that charlatan.'
'It's nice
to come across a humane and enlightened doctor, too,' said Richard. 'I can understand very well why that letter
had to be suppressed to protect him.'
'You don't
think it was suppressed just because of the hint at euthanasia, do you?' asked
Charles.
'Why
else? There's nothing incriminating in
it. She was a poor sick old woman. The secondary cancers in her brain made her
see things. But there was nothing mad
or dangerous about her. She simply
dreamed her dreams with her eyes open.'
'Richard, I
don't know if it's more espresso coffee you need, or more Tomintoul, but you
certainly need something to sharpen your wits.'
'Charles,
don't be so insulting!'
'Sorry,
Jessica, but as far as I'm concerned the reasoning is head-beatingly obvious.'
'Then
explain it. To both of us. I'll help Richard comprehend by giving him
some Lagavulin. It's lighter, smokier,
clears the brain. Tomintoul can be a
bit soporific.'
'As I
recall, we came to the collective surmise that one of the Fitzwarren
half-brothers survived the Great War, but that he was unable to resume his
rightful place in society - wherever that was, above or below stairs.
We further surmised that he might well have been drawn back to this
house. I don't think it requires too
great a conceptual leap to realise that when Lady Violet, in the exquisitely
painful final stages of cancer, thought she was being consoled by the
figure of her dear dead Harry she was in fact being consoled by her dear
dead Harry, or, equally possibly, by Lizzie Warren's dear dead Harry, I don't
think it really mattered or matters, either to her or to us. Or, probably, even to him.'
'God,' said
Richard, taking sips of the Lagavulin that were a little too large to be
respectful to its quality, 'just think of it!
An only child with two mothers!
And no father.'
'As I've
said before, that's not a situation on which I am in any way competent to
comment, so perhaps we could pass over it.'
'But
Charles,' asked Jessica, helping herself to coffee from Richard's pot, 'if dear
dead Harry, or, for the sake of argument, dear dead Hal, did, in the long run,
make himself known to Lady Violet, why didn't he do so earlier? Why are we assuming that he made his first
contact with Lizzie Warren?'
'Jessica, as
I find it increasingly painful to repeat, I am not qualified to discuss the
psychology of the mother-child relationship in any intimate way. It's possible that if it was dear dead Hal,
then he would have preferred to go to his own mother, the voice of nature and
so on. But even if it was dear dead
Harry, he would have found it infinitely easier to get in touch with Lizzie
Warren. She lived just beside the
kitchen, he only needed to come tap-tap-tapping at her window. Think about the practical difficulties
involved in getting a private audience with the lady of the household in her
apartments on the first floor.'
'But
Charles, all this history of the house began from a discussion of priest-holes
and secret passages - you admitted they existed - surely there must have been
other ways in?'
'I see where
your boys get it from, Richard. The
romanticism of caves and narrow tunnels - don't let Freud hear you. I'm sure you're right. But I can't help feeling that the emergence
of a dishevelled tramp from the panelling in the best drawing room would have
been more likely to lead to the summoning of the police than an emotional
recognition scene. Furthermore, there were
very good practical reasons why dear dead Hal or Harry would want to establish
contact with Lizzie Warren: cupboard love. She was a source of food. He was sleeping rough in the barns round
here and needed to eat. All Lady Violet
could have managed without arousing suspicion would have been a couple of extra
digestives with her cocoa on the supper tray.'
'Charles,
you have such a gift for graphic description, such insight into the lives of
ordinary people. But you haven't
explained why, fed, watered and washed, Hal/Harry couldn't or wouldn't go and
see his other mother? Would she have
turned him in?'
'I don't
know, Jessica. I doubt it. There may have been motives of jealousy, of
course. That is to say - and at this
point the reasoning gets quite complex - if Hal/Harry presented himself as Hal
to Lizzie Warren, in order to gain her maternal love, sympathy and support, how
could he go and present himself as Harry to Lady Violet without kicking Lizzie
in the teeth?'
'Hell hath
no fury like a mother scorned - that's the correct reading,' said
Richard.
'Of course,
when the poor love was dying it didn't matter - Lizzie Warren was obviously
good-hearted enough to condone the deception, and probably thought it was a
lovely thing her boy was doing.'
'You know,
Jessica, I'm genuinely grateful to you for some of these emotional insights
which would never have occurred to me.'
'Thank you,
Charles. I always hoped I'd be able to
bring something new into your life. The
funny thing is, Richard, we both mean it.'
'There is
also another complex of reasons why he would have chosen to make his approach
to Lizzie first. Whichever one he was -
and I don't think it matters - he had lost - forfeited - the right to be the
heir to the family fortune and, more importantly I think, to this house. If he had had anything to do with Lady
Violet, even on a fitful and surreptitious basis, he would constantly have been
reminded of everything of which he was now deprived - to some degree by his own
fault, at the very least by his own misfortune. Regret does not make a sleep-filled pillow, nor a tasty slice of
bread, saith the psalmist. The sauce of
self-reproach soon turns the stomach.
Constant involvement with, or even the close proximity of, those who
could or should have been his equals, but were now his superiors - and I'm
assuming that some form of rehabilitation was, for various reasons, out of the
question - would sour completely an existence that was already tainted with
bitterness. He remained with the servants.
He stuck to his own class.'
'I'm sorry,
Charles, but that sounds terribly snobby.'
'I know it
does, Jessica. It also sounds as though
I'm assuming the survivor was Hal Warren.
But I'm not. And anyway, Hal
Warren had been raised in the same way as Harry. It seems to me that if you can't follow in the tradition of
owning a house like this - assuming you take that tradition and your part in it
seriously - then the next best thing is to serve it. If you can't command, then
you obey. The commitment is absolute.'
'All this
time, Charles, we've been letting Frank Winston lie around with his head
smashed in by person or persons unknown - presumably not football fans on their
way to the first Wembley Cup Final.
Isn't it time we did something about investigating the crime?'
'Go on,
then, Richard. You know my
methods. It should be - '
'Elementary,' said Jessica, reaching for the Scapa Flow.
'I'd advise
against it,' said Charles, 'it has strength but lacks subtlety. It was, after all, where they scuttled the
German High Seas Fleet.'
'From what
you say, I imagine it was what scuttled them.'
'Well,' said
Richard, 'we know that in 1897 Lizzie Warren didn't want anything to do Frank
Winston, but that in 1923 she was living with him in a little cottage.'
'A squalid
place,' said Charles.
'What made
her move in with him?'
'The charm
of the older man?' suggested Jessica.
'The
considerably older man,' said Charles.
'When he tried to get his nasty grubby hands on her the first time he
was in his early thirties.'
'So, if it
wasn't passion, what was it? What was
it made Lizzie Warren move in with Frank Winston in 1923?'
'Do you run
your classes in school like this, with these endless rhetorical questions? Charles - give him the Scapa Flow - he doesn't
need subtlety, he needs strength.'
'I think it
was blackmail,' said Richard.
'Blackmail. That's what I
think.'
'God,' said
Jessica, 'from the sublime to the ridiculous!
First of all he beats about the bush, and then he comes out with it
plop! like a flasher in an underpass.'
'Where do
you get your similes, Jessica?'
'Shall I
have them make some in your size, Richard?'
'I must
confess, I thought they came off the peg.'
'Touchée, a
hit, I do confess it, a very palpable hit.
Why don't we let Charles do the elegant narration, while we kibitz?'
Charles
leant forward, and looked closely at the candle in front of him.
'Shepherds,'
he said, 'are up early and about late.
Shepherds see things that other folk don't see. Shepherds see things
that other folk aren't meant to see.
Shepherds see young men come tap-tap-tapping at the windows of their
lady-loves. At the windows of the shepherds'
lady-loves, which didn't ought to be.
Only the shepherd should come tap-tap-tapping at her window, and he
hasn't done that for many a year, because he knows the answer he'll get. But that doesn't stop him coming to look at
the window, perhaps. Maybe to make sure
that no one else comes tap-tap-tapping.
Maybe because he hopes to catch a sight of his lady-love in her slip,
that he never saw enough of when he was wed to her. Why, he still is wed to her. There's no one but he has a right to come tap-tap-tapping.'
'So he
waits,' said Jessica, 'to see who it is.
He stands there, all quiet-like, but jealous inside, and he sees her let
him in, but he still hasn't seen the face, and he doesn't know whether to
interrupt them or not. Will it be the
worse pain for her, to be caught out?
Or for him, to see the wife he's barely known in someone else's
arms? He thinks he'll shame her, and he
bursts in, or perhaps he just pokes his bristly face through the window, into
her painfully tiny, painfully neat room.'
'And what he
sees is the young master,' said Richard, 'or one of the young masters, that was
supposed to be dead or missing or runned away, it doesn't matter which. But they shouldn't be here, for all kinds of
reasons. And what he sees is the rival
you can never beat. The rival that's
younger, stronger and better loved.
From the start. The rival that's
related by blood, while you're only related by marriage. The rival that really was and is one flesh.
The son.'
'Thank you,
Richard,' said Charles, 'I learn all the time.
So Frank blackmails her into coming to live with him, in that squalid
place that stinks of sheep-grease and sheep-dirts and stinks of human filth and
lack of love. I think he degrades her
in all kinds of ways, some of which aren't even obvious to him. I think he hurts her more than she's ever
been hurt. She tries to keep it from
poor dear Hal, or Harry, who, whoever he may really have been, or think he is,
has by now become her son through all her sacrifices for him. But he can see the horror and the shame in
her face when he comes tap-tap-tapping now at the window of Street End.'
'Would Frank
let that go on?' asked Richard.
'Of course
he would,' said Jessica. 'God, you
don't understand men! He'd enjoy the
power he had. If Harry ran away, then
maybe they'd catch him or maybe they wouldn't - the Army, the police, whoever
was looking for him, or whoever he thought was looking for him. Once they caught him - or once he'd run away
- Frank would lose his hold over Lizzie.
What could he threaten to tell?
She might lose her post - but unlikely.
There was a bond between her and the mistress more important than any
scandal.'
'There might
have been jealousy, because Lizzie had kept Harry to herself,' said Charles.
'Too subtle
for Frank to think of that,' said Jessica.
'They'd have to catch him first and prove it was him. Lizzie would deny it all.'
'So Harry
was hanging round the district, sleeping rough in barns and hay-lofts, and
calling in for food,' said Richard.
'And when he realised the price he was paying for that food - the price
his mother was paying for that food - '
'Out with
the stick and thwack thwack thwack.
That's the way to do it.'
'Charles,
that's horrid.'
'I'm sure it
was horrid, Jessica. I don't know
whether they were in it together. I
don't know if Lizzie led Frank on in some way and lured him out to where he met
his death - I assume she must have got herself some good alibi, because I'm
certain the village and the big house knew that she didn't get on with her
husband, however good a face she put on it public.'
'A stick's
messy,' said Richard. 'Blood.
Bone-splinters. Hair.'
'But why
didn't they catch him?' said Jessica.
'That kind of murder - it's the sort you'd always blame on gypsies and
vagabonds, if all the members of the community with good reason had
alibis. The police would have combed
the countryside within hours. Harry
wouldn't have stood a chance.'
'Maybe they
were cannier than that, Jessica, Harry and Lizzie. Look at this. It's a
document for exemption from army service in the Second World War - the kind of
thing you show people so they don't think you're a deserter or that you've
dodged the draft.'
'It's in the
name of Harry Winston - resident at Street End - a relative of Frank's?'
'In a manner
of speaking. But only by marriage.'
'My
God! You mean that Lizzie got Frank to
vouch for Harry, and bring him into the community as a relative of his - living
under the same roof - no more tap-tap-tapping - and then they murdered him.'
'You make it
sound very cold-blooded. I doubt if it
was planned that way. Perhaps when he
was living in the house - or, more likely, in the shed at the end of the garden
- it became all the more obvious to him what was going on.'
'But
Charles,' said Richard, 'wasn't it a fearful risk for Harry to get involved
with the police in a murder investigation?'
'I take it
that Frank had provided him with some kind of documentation, so that shouldn't
have been a problem. What he needed was
an alibi. Maybe he took the train
somewhere on business for Frank - there used to be a line along the valley, you
know - Augustus John used it regularly, to go up to London for his exhibitions,
or to see one of his mistresses - Harry stayed away for a couple of days, made
sure he was seen - but cycled back secretly
- waited in the woods - did the deed - cycled back along footpaths -
waited to be notified of his cousin's death, then returned.'
'I don't
want this to sound too pat, Charles,' said Jessica, '- but there's an envelope
here with rail tickets in it and a boarding-house bill. Also some other financial paper-work that I
don't quite understand. Do you want to
investigate it?'
'What?
And spoil a good supposition by testing it against truth? No, thank you very much.'
'Charles,'
said Richard, 'how do you know all these things?'
'I read a
lot of Thomas Hardy when I was young.
It gave me a deep insight into the grimness of the English peasant
mentality. Come to think of it, the
aristocracy aren't too good either.'
'That leaves
the bourgeoisie like us, then.'
'I vaguely
hope that wood-lice will inherit the earth.
They're quiet, civilised, tidy, stupid and don't do any conspicuous
damage. What do you say, Richard?'
'I was just
thinking about Harry, cycling back to Salisbury or wherever, in the pitch dark
- '
'There was
probably a moon - they could have picked their time - but maybe you're right -
better in the dark - '
'Throwing
away the stick in the woods, because it would have been a fresh cut one, not
anything to associate with anyone at all - taking off the clothes he'd worn in
case they had blood on them, burying them there in the woods, deep woods, old
woods - maybe even in the Great Yews, they'd have been on his road if he stuck
to the high chalk - washing himself in one of the ponds, or maybe one of the
troughs for the sheep in a field corner - putting on the town clothes that he'd
hidden on the way out - and back down to his boarding-house in the town - up
the drainpipe and back into bed - '
'Would he
really have worried about all those clues on his clothes?'
'Oh, yes,
Jessica - Inspector French books were very popular in the early 1920's. I'm sure Lizzie would have read them, from
Boots' threepenny library, or Mudie's.
Well, she may have read them after her mistress, but I'm sure that they
were the major excitement in both of their lives - beside certain other matters.'
'Charles -
how do you manage to be such a cold fish?'
'Practice,
Jessica. Effort. Now - is the story over?'
'Do you
think he was haunted by his crime?'
'I doubt
it. He'd probably seen - and done -
worse things in France, and at least this time he knew why he was
killing the man. I have the impression
that Harry just happened to be at the head of the queue. Any more questions?'
'What became
of them all in the end?'
'I actually
happen to know that.'
'Is there
anything you don't happen to know?'
'Jessica, I
detect a hint of sarcasm in your voice, and prescribe Lagavulin for it.'
'But how do
you happen to know what happened to them all?' asked Richard. 'Another document?'
'Yes. And one that your parents must once have
possessed, but probably discarded well before they began getting rid of your
toys.'
'Did I tell
you about that?'
'Yes. Only twenty-eight years ago. With embarrassment, because it was evident
how much they still meant to you, and you were as ashamed of emotion then as
you are now.'
'You can
talk!'
'Yes. But I admit it. It doesn't help very much, but it does a little good.'
'So where's this document? What is it?
Show us it!'
'Patience,
Jessica! We've only just finished our
Old Boys' Reunion. Here it is.'
Charles
produced from the pocket of his jacket, which had long since been hanging
behind him on his chair, a kind of brochure of modest proportions, printed
attractively on what seemed like cartridge paper.
'It's the
school prospectus,' he said, 'for 1947, the year we came. Look at the names of the staff.'
Taking it
between them, Richard and Jessica did.
On the back page, in very small type, they read:
Cook: E.
Warren; Groundsman/Caretaker: H. Winston.
'When did
you realise?' asked Richard.
'Well,' said
Charles, 'it's a bit of a cheat actually, because Lizzie Warren never in fact
cooked for us. She died in that very
cold winter of 1947, before we came in the autumn. My parents got the prospectus early. As for Harry, or Hal - I told you I used to talk to him a lot -
he said things that I didn't understand - and now I do. Most of them. The nearest I have to proof, I suppose, is that Army Exemption
Certificate. That has the name on. But there's a lot of it that's only surmise
- a lot of it that maybe even he isn't sure of any more. The past changes, you know, it doesn't stay
the same. The scene you look back at
isn't the same one you've just cycled through, and it certainly isn't the one
you looked forward to before you free-wheeled down into the valley.'
'If he's
still around,' said Jessica, 'don't you think we should go and tell him we -
understand? I think that would console
him.'
'Jessica,'
said Charles, 'you constantly surprise me.
Shall we call it our Christmas present to him? The knowledge that there are other people who - understand? That - in some sense - the tradition hasn't
died?'
'Let's drink
to it,' said Richard. 'The past.'
'The past,'
they all said together, and clinked their tumblers.
'But who,'
said Richard again, 'do you feel sorriest for?'
'Well,' said
Jessica, 'for me it has to be Hal or Harry, who thought he knew who he was and
then found he wasn't any more, and didn't know how to be anyone else except the
shadow of what he should have been.
That's really sad.'
'You mean -
when your past goes wrong, you have to cut yourself completely free from it?'
said Richard.
'Richard,
Richard,' said Charles, in his world-weariest tone, 'I wish they'd issue some
fresh metaphors at your school. The
past is the wreckage that you cling to after the shipwreck. You don't actually know where it's going to
take you, but you have a nasty suspicion it's going out to sea. You won't actually drown, because you can
lash yourself to it, and it won't sink, but you'll very likely die of thirst or
starvation, unless you happen to be picked up by a passing ship or run on to a
little island. On the other hand,
visible to you, and not all that far away, is the coast of the future. How well can you swim? How strong are the currents? Are there any sharks? Will the natives be friendly?'
'Do your
metaphors shrink in the wash, Charles?' asked Jessica. 'They could do with going in a little.'
'The person
I feel sorriest for,' said Richard, 'is Sir Harry, who lost both the women he
loved, was never allowed to get close to his sons, and then, when they'd grown
to be men, and he might have asserted himself and got to know them and earn
their love, had them taken away by war and death.'
'Don't you
think,' said Jessica, 'that he must have been a bit of a wimp to put up with
being bossed about by those women?
Couldn't he just have said, "I'm going down the pub with my two
lads, and if you don't like it, you can jolly well lump it!" ? And as for the women, if Lady Violet was
right out of the running physically, which is very sad for her, no doubt, but
not actually Sir Harry's fault, couldn't he just have said to her, "I'm
very sorry, m'dear, but if I don't have it, then I go funny" and gone off
tap-tap-tapping on Lizzie's window till she opened it.'
'I'm not
sure,' said Richard, 'that you have any inkling of the unfathomable depths of
women's resentment.'
'Don't you
believe it!' said Jessica. 'It's a
bottomless pit - but there are ways of filling it up, if men know how and are
prepared to try. Guilt isn't one of
them.'
'I,' said
Charles, 'feel sorriest for Anne, who has not been here to hear this story and
explore all its ramifications. I feel
sorry for her, because she will not know what she has missed, and will not
imagine that she has really missed anything, except for a bit of white wine,
some cheese, whisky and coffee. But we
all know that during the past few hours we have become not only older, but
wiser - that we have entered into other people's lives and escaped again - that
we have experienced the past, and are living to tell the tale. Because living is telling the tale -
telling the tale of ourselves, which is susceptible of an infinity of
interpretations, depending upon the point at which, and the point of
view from which you begin interpreting.
Living is also telling the tales of other people, where theirs crosses
ours. I think poor Anne did not want
hers to cross ours - I think she thinks we are pretentious and sophisticated,
and we think she is limited and unsophisticated. I sincerely hope that none of these judgements are accurate in
the larger scheme of things, and merely reflect a mutual antipathy such as can
arise out of transient moods and emotional circumstances. And with these words, I declare our
gathering closed and wish all of us a restful night, what there is left of it.'
He rose,
bowed, blew out the candle in front of him and left the room.
Charles's
bedroom, which was the other way along the corridor from the room he had
assigned to Anne and Richard, was ascetic, but far from uncomfortable. The bare dark wood floor (he had carefully
chosen one of the few rooms free from active worm and rot) was dominated by a
circular Greek goatskin rug, pure white, except for what looked like an eye in
the centre, a pattern that had clearly grown in the hair of the original
goat. The rug was six feet in diameter. Charles called it his 'magic circle', and
lay naked on it when he wanted to concentrate and 'be in tune with himself'.
The plain
white walls, which had not yet had their plaster stripped, were interrupted by
four pictures: a two foot by four foot canvas of one single colour, a dark
blackish-blue, which in fact shaded almost imperceptibly from top to bottom; a
reproduction of Breughel's Tower of Babel, busy with scurrying figures
and activity, curling up neatly and pointedly into the clouds; a reproduction
of Nicolas Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time, which, like the
majority of his pictures, was a study in the juxtaposition of large areas of
blue, orange and yellow, disguised as the richly draped garments of historical,
mythological or Biblical protagonists; finally, a work of his own, a
composition, on a pale blue background, of cut-out pieces of white, green and
dark blue tissue paper, in the style of Matisse, which wavered between being
abstract and a representation of the sea and cliffs, with just a hint of some
other subject that might have been a naked human body, but a very schematic
one.
His bed lay
diagonally in the room, so that he could look at all the pictures on the
walls. A triangular table neatly filled
the space behind the head of the bed, between it and the corner. On this table were: a carafe of water and a
glass, a functional black alarm clock, a lamp on a stalk that folded back into
its base to make what looked like a large metal mollusc, and a small
green-patinaed bronze owl, with the first three letters of the name Athene
in Greek capitals on the base. Charles
knelt on the bed naked, having taken off his clothes in the little lobby to his
room, which served as a wardrobe and dressing-space. He picked up the bronze owl and kissed it, saying aloud, 'But let
me most of all praise understanding.'
Then he slid under the duvet and went to sleep.
He found
himself in a museum, but one with which he was not familiar, among Greek
statuary, and since, for once, no attendant was visible, and there were no signs
of closed-circuit cameras, tripwires or the paraphernalia of public
collections, he gave in to a long-standing temptation and got in among the
chaste white statues and began feeling them, beginning with their buttocks and
then progressing to their thighs, knees, ankles, feet, torsoes, nipples and so
on. He felt the muscles beneath the
skin, he felt the curves of the ribs in the rib-cage and more than once had the
sensation that the statues were actually alive and the rib-cages were moving up
and down. He sensed breath on his
cheek, and began therefore to take an interest in the faces of those statues
that had heads. He stroked them, and
discovered that when he moved his hand against the normal nap of the skin he
could feel bristles, which he found to be an agreeable sensation. He felt the cheek-bones and the curve of the
edge of the eye-sockets and the flap at the front of the ear itself. As he finished stroking the upper lip of one
statue, he became aware that the other statues which had lacked heads now had
them. In his excitement, he pressed a
kiss on the lips of the statue he was presently embracing, only to feel in
response a tongue pressing against his own lips and seeking urgently and
feverishly to enter his mouth.
Uncertain
whether or not to respond, he felt himself gripped firmly from behind by a pair
of powerful arms, and thought, 'Aha, the authority figures have intervened at
last to save me from my worst instincts,' but as he turned round to face up to
his responsibilities, he found he was being clasped by the Venus de Milo, who
had acquired a pair of beautifully shaped white marble arms that matched her
breasts in firmness and suppleness.
'But those
can't be genuine,' he heard himself saying, 'adequate testing will, I'm sure, demonstrate
that they are later, and probably inferior, additions. My duty as an art historian compels me to -
' and at this point he felt himself being released and toppling backwards, only
to be retrieved from falling by a brawny and hairy male arm, that pulled him
back up on to what he now perceived to be a fairly flimsy scaffolding a long
way up from a very hard-looking marble pavement. Reluctant to look down any longer, he looked up and saw an
extremely familiar sight less than three feet above his head: it was the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and there was God, passing the spark of life to
Adam with a touch of finger to finger, rather like a baton change in a relay
race, or a one-handed pass from scrum-half to fly-half. Taking a swig from the can of Guinness in
his right hand, he passed it on to the burly bearded figure seated on the
scaffolding beside him, with a clutch of fine to medium paint-brushes lodged in
the curly hair above his left ear, and said, 'Look here, Mick, why don't you
come out properly, and have God and Adam holding hands with each other?' 'Tell that to the Pope!' replied
Michelangelo in a broad Irish accent, as he turned into his own angry statue of
Moses, and with one large gesture of his stone-hewing arm swept Charles from
the scaffolding.
As he closed
his eyes in despair and tumbled earthwards, the air rushing past, he felt a
gentler fluttering around him and smelt the sweet scent of cabbage roses. On opening his eyes, he saw that seraphim
and cherubim and, disdaining any distinction on the grounds of religion, hosts
of putti and amoretti had freed themselves from the frescoes and
plaster-work and were not only breaking his fall, but lowering him gently into
his very own bed, where he woke up, drank two glasses of water, and fell asleep
again dreamlessly.
Left alone
in the darkened kitchen, Richard and Jessica looked at one another. The two remaining candles were nearing the
end of their life.
'Well,' said
Jessica, 'are we going to bed together?'
She leant forward and blew out the candle in front of her. 'No sense in wasting light.'
'What about
Anne?'
'That's her
problem. And yours. No.
Sorry. That's cruel. No.
It's not cruel. It just sounds
it. I wouldn't have asked you if I
didn't know that that was what you wanted.
Since you want it, that says something about your relationship with
Anne. It may be something that you are
unwilling to admit to yourself. It may
be something that you are unwilling to admit to Anne. But it won't just go away, so you'd better face up to it. One way of facing up to it is to give me an
answer to the question I just asked you.'
'I'm not
sure I want to take that decision now.'
'If you're not sure, then you've taken it
already, somewhere inside. Mostly, we
don't take decisions consciously. What
we do consciously is understand the decisions we've already taken, so that we
can stop fighting against them. Another
thing I should remind you of is that not all decisions are long-term ones. Some are just for the moment.'
'But some
decisions that we take for the moment pre-empt - quite incidentally - other
decisions, things that we didn't yet want to decide.'
'You've been
in the staff-room too long, Richard, you talk like the headmaster's
bulletin. The decision between us is
about what we - you and me and nobody else - do now - no other
time. This is not about a long-term
relationship. This is not about a
short-term relationship. This is about
our feelings towards each other at this particular moment and how we intend to
express them.'
'But - '
'"What
about Anne?" Look, that's your
question and you ought to be the one to answer it. But since I feel about you at the moment as
I do, I will give you some pointers to the answer that you have inside you and
that you are unwilling to let out. I
will tell you about the effect of our going to bed together.'
'Tell me,'
said Richard, and he reached across and took her hand. Gently, she took it away from him.
'No,' she
said, 'we must do these things separately and properly. What we are saying to each other now is not
part of any foreplay, or courtship ritual.
If you think it is, then you will misunderstand it and not take it
seriously. You shouldn't look at
emotions emotionally. Let me start
again. What will going to bed with me
mean?'
'A great
deal of pleasure,' said Richard, staring at the one candle still left alight.
'Not
necessarily. Wait and find out. Anticipation is often three-quarters of the
fun. If not nine-tenths. There is a German proverb that says, Do not
praise the day before the evening - and there is a rider to it, which says: Nor
the woman before the following morning.
Let's start again. Stop trying
to find the 'right answer'. I'm not
Anne you know. I'm not expecting you to
get it wrong. You don't have to say
what you think I want to hear.
You have to say what you want to hear. What will going to bed with me mean?'
'It will be
something I want to do.'
'Hallelujah. Say it again.'
'It will be
something I want to do. Do you know, it
wasn't easy for me to say that.'
'I know it
wasn't easy. You're not used to saying
what you want, let alone to doing what you want. Next stage. What will
going to bed with me do to your marriage?'
'Not much.'
'Why? Take your time. You answered that last one a little quickly. There's no need to rush. You've got all the rest of your life.'
Richard
looked at the candle in front of him.
Its flame was dancing just above the blackened tip of the wick. He could see the wax melting steadily and
running down into the pool around the wick itself. He knew that it then turned into vapour and rose up and ignited
just above the charred end of that piece of string, and there it made that
beautifully curved shape of light and heat, that had no existence itself, but
was just the place where the wax that had become a gas turned mysteriously into
heat, light, water vapour and soot.
Solid, opaque whiteness became the eternal pairing of light and dark.
'Because
there's not much left for it to do anything to. Habitual actions, with no content.'
'Do you
want to try and put a content back into them?'
'I think
we've tried that a few times. It works
for a while. Then the habits take
over. They're stronger than we
are. The past. Traditions.
Ways of behaving.'
'You were
saying not so long ago that you thought Harry should have just got the hell out
and never come back.'
'I think he
should. I think I should. I feel so trapped in my past. I feel so trapped by my past.'
'So. What are you going to do?'
'I'm going
to let go of the wreckage and start floundering around with you.'
'That's
quite a compliment. I'm not sure it's
accurate. I'm not at all sure that I've
let go of my wreckage in order to strike out for the shore. And even if I have - it's probably because
my wreckage has sunk. I'd also better
remind you about D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love.'
'What? You want me and Charles to wrestle naked by
candlelight in front of the Aga?'
'I was
thinking about the couple that get drowned in the lake because they cling to
each other too tightly, and don't swim.'
'Lawrence
says it was the woman that drowned the man by hanging on to him.'
'That's
Lawrence for you, bugger him. He tends
to blame the women, whether they're wives, mothers or lovers, for screwing the
men up. Men can screw themselves up
perfectly well, thank you, without any help from us.'
'What about
Charles?'
'I was
wondering when you were going to ask that.'
'It seemed
like a gentlemanly question.'
'It is. Charles and I don't sleep together. That is, we don't sleep together unless we
want to. I sometimes think it'd be a
nice change to have to sleep with somebody every night - you'd explore
different moods. But then I forget that
I've tried that way too, and it didn't work any better either.'
'Perhaps it
all depends who you sleep with.'
'They all
say that. I told you, this is the
truth-time. Save the other stuff for
when we're actually in bed. In
the dream-time. What about Anne? If she
finds out?'
'I won't
tell her.'
'No. I think you probably need a little more
practice at finding what it is you want, and doing it, without guilt, before
the full-scale confrontation.'
'But if
something goes wrong, and she does find out, I think it will only confirm what
she already feels but refuses to admit.'
'Look - I
don't want you to think that love - or passion - or sex - or whatever it is -
Charles has all the distinctions and definitions off pat - is the most
important thing in the world, just because it sometimes feels like it. There are other things, to do with
friendship and honesty and loyalty, which are actually longer lasting. I've known marriages where they became much
more important than the love and the sex, which just faded away a bit, as they
do, with time.'
'I don't
think my marriage is one like that.
It's more mutually combative than mutually supportive. Even where the
kids are concerned. I think Anne will blossom when she hasn't got me to pull
apart. I draw down the corners of her
mouth, automatically, like biting into a lemon.'
'Well, you
don't draw down the corners of my mouth.
Look, I feel particularly bad about leaving the kitchen in this kind of
mess. I've not internalised anything,
and I'm not scared that Anne will think I'm a slut when she comes down in the
morning, and I'm not taking over the traditional female role because Charles is
too chauvinistic - but do you mind if we clear up a bit? I read the Catholic Truth Society's pamphlet
on marriage once, and the most sensible thing in it was the statement that you
can't make love successfully if you've left a saucepan on the stove. The orgasm may be like milk boiling
over, but it's not improved if milk is boiling over. That last bit wasn't in the pamphlet -
that's my gloss on it.'
She began
stacking plates, gathering glasses, putting cutlery in piles into empty tureens
and bowls. Richard re-lit the candles
so that they could both see, and began to help her. As he did so, he considered how he felt about it. He had never been an idle husband - and yet
he had quietly resented helping. It had
never - before - been what he wanted to do.
It had been a duty. Duties are
mostly impositions. And what they are
imposed on, resists. What he found
himself doing now was a free offer of help, for which there was free
gratitude. She kissed him.
'If only
there were a dishwasher,' she said. 'I
moved flats in London just to get a place where I could have one. But Charles believes in the dignity of human
labour, and says it binds the guests together socially. When he invites people, he genuinely does
put it in the small print that they have to do the dishes afterwards.'
'He invited
us by telephone, and there wasn't a word of it.'
'Then he
really has slipped up! How are Nigel
and Jeremy at these things? If we stood
them on stools? Alan Ladd had to be
stood on a box to kiss most of his leading ladies. It's no disgrace being too small to reach the sink.'
'You've seen
what Jeremy does to floorboards.
Nigel's speciality are mugs. He
runs settees over them and grinds the contents into the carpet out of
sight. Cast-iron I'd trust them with.'
'Good. Then they can clean the Aga. They're small enough to get right
inside. And then they can climb up the
chimney and clean that. It needs
it. I knew I hadn't read The
Water-Babies for nothing.'
The scrubbed
deal table lay bare and clean. The
history of the Fitzwarrens was neatly piled behind the tea-cosy. The crystal whisky tumblers had been rinsed,
dried and put away. The malts
themselves were taking a well deserved rest in the darkness of the drinks
cupboard. Brass utensils, copper pots
and moulds glowed against the walls with the shimmer that all old objects
possess. They put the Aga on its lowest
setting. They opened the windows wide
for a few moments to let out the old air, and let in some fresh. It had stopped raining, but the bushes were
dripping steadily. The candles
flickered and burnt more brightly. Then
they closed the windows again.
Hand in
hand, and both of them breathless with anticipation, they went round to each
candle, kissed, and blew it out. The
last they picked up and carried off, to light them to bed.
Meanwhile,
the boys had indulged themselves to satiety in their computer-games, restrained
of course by the need for silence. They
had slain dragons and crawled through labyrinths. They had conquered the forest of Zonmar and the poisonous dwarves
of Omri. They had found all the rings
of Zutphen three times, and given up in disgust on the fourth attempt when it
transpired that it was exactly the same as the first (avoid cheap Korean muck
was Nigel's mental note to himself).
They had ridden black steeds from the stables of Gom and freed the
chained-up princess of Almadovar (a particularly well-endowed piece of
software, that made full use of the programme's potential for 3D).
Jeremy's
penchant was more for inter-galactic space than sword and sorcery. Although he had shared Nigel's grapplings
with the manifestations of the Jungian collective sub-conscious, he preferred
the hard-tech challenges of astral navigation and the new improved form of
Space Invaders, where the Invaders could disguise themselves as your own ships
until it was almost too late. A tiny
purple dot was the only clue you had in this self-directed learning course in
paranoia.
When these
delights were over, they moved into the realm of the twee. Desert islands. Floating clouds.
Schematic canoes that rolled over and over and over and over. Little cars whose wheels came off and
carried on rolling when the car hit a bump - the steerable chassis flew in the
air and had to be manoeuvred so as to drop back in place. Dogs who wagged their tails till they flew
off, and then chased round after them.
Stick figures who performed anatomically impossible antics. The Swedish apostles of mental hygiene who
banned Tom and Jerry would have been reaching for the petrol-can and the
matches in no time. (Though there was
no sign of the pornographic, racist or fascist games that, rumour had it,
circulated on disc in other playgrounds than theirs; National Front Software
Very Limited had not made many inroads south-east of the river).
No, it was
just good old violence and accuracy at shooting that dominated. Sometimes there was skill, anticipation and
judgement. But mostly what was required
was speed of reaction and co-ordination between the two hands. So they came back to the old favourites:
Western-style shoot-outs and the non-paranoid Space Invaders. Down from the sky they came streaming, to be
blasted into nothingness and points scores in their thousands. You wondered where all the dead ones and the
bits of them went to - at least, you would have done if you hadn't been so busy
shooting down the next wave.
Just as
unrestricted access to a confectioner's establishment can only result in severe
digestive discomfort, so the computer-game binge brought its own
retribution. Children are not designed
for nineteen hours of ceaseless activity
- it only seems that way. Their
reactions began to slow. Earth's
prospects of surviving the all-out alien onslaught grew bleaker. Their eyes grew blearier and blearier. Trigger-thumbs and joy-stick fingers
ached. Their arms became tired. GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER it said on the
screens. They looked at each other in
despair, disappointment and exhaustion.
But neither could draw consolation, inspiration or new strength from the
other. In a daze, in a trance, in a
twilight state, they crept into their beds and lay, benumbed, watching the
automatic trailers for their favourite games cross and re-cross the gently
glowing screens, until the screens of their eyes went dark.
The fact
that they had virtually the same dream doesn't mean that they had identical personalities. But the differences between the immediate
stimuli were infinitesimal.
It began with the mess behind the computers. You or I may wonder idly where the dead Space Invaders all go to. But Jeremy and Nigel's mother, Anne, knew. They dropped out of the back of the computer and the computer had to be turned off, whatever they were in the middle of, and moved, so that they could be swept up. Vacuumed up, with that dreadful noise, and that dreadful interference that spoilt all their attempts to tape the pop record that happened to be playing on Radio 1, and it had to be done just then, no, it couldn't be done three minutes later, even if the whole day was available for the operation.
With all
that resentment, it wasn't actually surprising that one of the brothers (and it
wasn't clear which) should have the idea of picking up the remote control for
the television and video (which was a clever one, and could learn things; it
had started off only being the telly control, but had done a YTS course in
controlling the video and Dad said it would soon get an HNC in the central
heating and an HND in doing the lights or the garage door), and see what effect
it had on other things in the room.
Well, one quick burst revived the dead Space Invaders and they swarmed
all over Anne - how she screamed! - as if they were ants or other little black
insects. But then the figure of Anne
seemed to be made up entirely of Space Invaders, like those computer print-outs
with a shape made of letters, and yet she was behaving just like their mother
and they couldn't shoot her down with the special gun or control her movements
with the joy-stick. She just came for
them, screaming and shouting about how they should put away their toys and
clear up properly after them and not leave the top off the marmalade or the
margarine out of the fridge, and they ran.
First of
all, they ran into the bathroom, which seemed a good move, since it was the
only room in the house where you could shut the door so that nobody could open
it. But then they saw the Space
Invaders sneaking through the frosted glass at one corner, and filling it up as
if it were a screen, and slowly the figure of Anne formed on it, and they
turned round, and there she was, on the frosted glass of the window as well.
Suddenly,
they heard the noise of the family car outside, which meant their father,
Richard, had come home. He would
probably want to go up to the recreation ground and play football, which meant
showing off how hard he could kick, and how he could always beat them when they
were goalies and always save the balls they kicked at him when they took
penalties. But it was better than the
slow death of a thousand vacuum cleanings, so they usually went along, since he
meant well and didn't try to control them too much.
So they ran
out to greet him, and to get away from the noise of the vacuum cleaner, which
had begun to make a funny tap-tap-tapping sound as well as its normal fearful
row, and was moving up and down quite independently of anybody directing
it. But when they got outside, they saw
that the figure of their mother, still made up of all those Space Invaders, had
got there first, and had started having a quarrel with their father, and it was
just like those fighting figures that kicked their limbs at each other: they
flailed and shouted and hit out at one another, till their heads and their arms
and their legs came off, and then they picked them up and put them back on and
started again, all the time with this funny tap-tap-tapping sound.
And, just
before their mother had appeared and attacked him, their father had been
holding two little black kittens, and he'd put them down on the ground and
shooshed them over to the boys, and the two little kittens were so frightened
by what was going on outside that they ran into the house and saw the heap of
little black Space Invaders crawling around on the carpet where the computers
had been, and they ate them all up, and then they belched.
And then
they began to fight with each other, standing on their hind legs, cuffing at
one another with their front paws, pulling out tufts of fur, and each piece of
fur, as it fell on the carpet, turned into a Pacman and ran through all
the rooms of the house, eating whatever it fancied as it went, and belching
afterwards, its jaw making this funny, wooden tap-tap-tapping noise. They ate all the books on the bookshelf in
the lounge, all the records, all the cassettes, all the CDs. They ate the morning newspaper and the
evening newspaper and the instructions for the video- recorder that were always
kept with it. They ate all the games
that Nigel and Jeremy never played with any more, and all the cook-books in the
kitchen.
Then they
looked round, thinking about what else they could eat, and looked at Nigel and
Jeremy, with their jaws going tap-tap-tap - but they thought better of it, and
started in on Anne's sewing patterns, and when those were gone, they turned to
the heap of computer-games in the corner, that Nigel and Jeremy were too lazy
to put back in their proper boxes, and they chomped at those, with their jaws
going all the time tap-tap-tap. And
that was just too much.
Meanwhile,
Jessica and Richard had undressed each other slowly by candlelight. They stroked one another and caressed one
another, both clothed and unclothed, kissed chastely at first, and then
passionately, and then chastely again.
'This is
always new,' said Jessica. 'When I do
these things, I never remember how they were with anyone else. There's only ever now.'
'Don't say
the word: remember. I don't want to
know there's such a thing. I only want
one time: now. I want to think that I
only came to consciousness in this moment.
I don't want any world outside this room, outside this bed.'
'You are all
the world I want. They say the world is
round, and you are round: look - I put my arms around you, and my hands
join. I can trace a path over your
chest with my fingers, and then over your back and my fingers come back to
where they started.'
'The world
has hills and forests and plains - or so I've heard - and so have you. And I
want to explore them. Here are my ten
little explorers.'
'And here
are mine. Shall we go together for a
while? First we can both explore me,
then we can both explore you.'
'What do we
do, when we've explored each other?'
'Forget, and
do it all over again. I've found a cave
I want you to explore. Deeper, deeper,
all the way. There may be riches there,
or a hidden river.'
'The river
is beginning to flow.'
'It must be
dammed. A great rock must be put there
to seal the cave. Do you have a great,
firm rock in your world that will seal the flowing cave in my world? Then bring it, bring it, bring it, as quickly
as you can, and place it there. You
must make sure it fits tightly - you must slide it out and slide it in again,
just to make sure it fits, just to make sure it fits and fits and fits...'
'Your hills
and valleys - '
'Your peaks
and troughs - '
'Your cave
is trembling - is that an earthquake?'
'Not yet -
not yet - be patient - your rock is trembling - will it split and a violent
spring gush forth?'
'Not yet -
not yet - be patient - '
'I want to
be. I want to wait like this till the
rivers have rubbed at the mountains, and washed them away and filled the sea
with them, and new mountains rise up from the sea, and the rivers start to rub
them away, too.'
'I want to
wait like this for ever, while the tides roll to and fro, to and fro, turning
the stones they rub against this way and that, this way and that, to and fro -
'
'What do you
want to say? Say what you want to
say. Say what you want.'
'I want to
say I love you, but I'm scared.'
'Say
it. It's true. It's true now. Say it now. Say : I love you - now.'
'I love you
now.'
'I love you
now. Kiss me. Lick me. Suck me. Now.'
'Now.'
'Take
me. Love me. Own me. Now. Not before.
Not after. Now.'
'Not
before. Not after. Now.
I love you now.'
'Now - now -
now!'
'Now.'
'FIRE! FIRE!
FIRE! FIRE!'
Wrenched
from the dreamless, weightless, formless aftermath of ecstasy, hand in hand,
not hiding their nakedness in their confusion, like Adam and Eve summoned by
policeman God with ''Allo, 'allo, 'allo, what's all this 'ere then? Been eatin' apples, 'ave we?", Jessica
and Richard, still firmly hand in hand in fact as in mind, stumbled into the
corridor to meet whatever disaster they were about to encounter together.
In the light
that spilt from the door of her room, intended for two but only occupied by
one, Anne, who had been nearer the top of the pool of unconsciousness and had
surfaced more rapidly, Anne, who stood there suave and secure and composed and
collected, despite the alarm, her well-formed body enticingly swathed in a
champagne towelling night-robe (not a dressing-gown), Anne, from her
position of moral and mental superiority, looked at the frail and naked human
bodies exposed to her view in their fright and uncertainty, their shivering and
mutual clutching.
She noted
Richard's more than incipient paunch and wondered why it was that God seemed to
have designed men to be pear-shaped on principle, whatever they did about
it. She was even more scathing about
Jessica: scrawny, sagging, droopy were the nicest words in her mental
catalogue; at a subconscious level, she warned herself to take care and
exercise over the next few years that would bring her up to Jessica's age. Only after these observations had been made,
and etched into her mind with sufficient acid, did it occur to her to register
what the disturbance had been that had brought her, and, in addition (but she
had nothing to do with them and wanted to make that clear) these sorry
specimens of humanity into the corridor from their snug bedrooms.
At that
moment, Charles, elegant as ever, in one of those kimonos whose design must be
a haiku by Basho, Charles, above all this, strode past in the direction
of the shouting, taking command by the mere force of his passing. There was a distant smell of smoke.
The smell
grew stronger as he approached the boys' room, and when he opened the door to
it, he could see that the atmosphere inside was definitely not as clear as it
should be. The lads were sat up in bed,
coughing, staring ahead, uncertain of what they should do. They had raised the alarm on the strength of
what they smelt and saw about them, but not seeing any flames to which they
could respond directly - (their father had once found them reading a censored
version of Gulliver's Travels, and had tried to win them for literature
by telling them how Gulliver really put the fire out) - they had simply
retired to bed and waited for the adults to take charge.
Charles
did. The sight of the two computers
plugged in and running from the same socket told him a great deal of what he
needed to know. He unplugged them
brutally, toppling the gambolling figures into an abyss of jagged lines as they
faded from view. 'Fools!' he shouted,
and went away to turn off the electricity at the mains and investigate, if he
could, where the over-heating had occurred and a fire might at this moment be
burning. The boys, who had just come to
realise the nature of their predicament, were not reassured when the lights
went out, and the tap-tap- tapping sound, which had woken them and let them
realise their danger, continued.
Anne, left
in the dark without explanation, stuck by her post, but felt somewhat
betrayed. Richard and Jessica retreated
into their room, where, by the advantage of a candle, they dressed themselves
to face, if not the world or their Maker, at least the events of the immediate
future.
Fortunately,
the problem with the wiring had occurred in the room immediately below the
boys', where Charles had already stripped out the decayed modern plasterboard
ceiling to reveal the electrical circuit in all its vulnerability. There was some superficial singeing to the
wood of the joists, but most of the smell and the smoke had come from burning
dust, and the stench had spread through the house via the cracks and crannies
with which he had grown familiar. But
as he stood and pointed his powerful torch at the ceiling, and listened to the
boys in the room above chattering to each other with fear and excitement, he,
too, heard the tap-tap-tapping that had roused them. It was getting slower now, and softer, but it was still audible.
Gathering an
armful of electric torches, which he passed out to those he met on the way,
Charles set off in search of the noise.
He strode into the boys' room, looked at them quizzically and said,
'That tapping noise. What do you know
about it?'
They answered,
plainly and simply, 'It woke us up.'
'Hmm,' said
Charles, ' well, it seems to be coming from the room above this one, doesn't
it. And it's almost stopped now. I'd better see what's making it. My guess is that it's connected with the
fire you've just nearly caused, you pair of little horrors.' And he went out, leaving them with a torch
between them, which they fought over, because they both wanted to do
shadow-plays, and somebody had to hold the beam in the right place.
Charles went
up to the room above. The noise had
indeed almost stopped, but very infrequently and very faintly he could just
discern a tapping sound behind the panelling on one of the walls. He rapped across it with his fingertips -
and lo and behold! In the centre there
was a place that sounded hollow.
Momentarily, he wished he had brought up the small crow-bar he used for
opening packing-cases. But that was
just impatience resulting from the time of night or morning. The panelling was far too good to injure in
that way. He drummed his fingers across
it again, and, seduced by the quality of the workmanship and the attractiveness
of the grain, started to fondle the carved linen-folds.
As in all
the best books, a section of the panelling pivoted outwards, nearly knocking
him over, to reveal a body that was hanging by the neck from the floor joist of
the room above, and was slowly swinging this way and that, so that its feet
would have periodically touched the inside of the panelling that had just
opened.
'Jessica! Richard!' he shouted. 'Come up here!'
Anne,
ignored, excluded, betrayed, humiliated, sat in her room, clutching her torch,
and felt aggrieved. She picked up a
magazine, but the effort of holding the heavy torch and reading was too great,
so she put the torch on to the bedside table, pointing up to the ceiling to
give some light, and lay back on her pillow to think black thoughts.
'Here's the
end of the story,' said Charles, gesturing to the body which hung completely
motionless now, its grey and lifeless face, with slightly poppy and staring
eyes, looking out into the room at the three of them. 'It's Harry Winston - or Hal - or the last of the Fitzwarrens -
or whoever. It's the caretaker. I'd not seen him for a little while. I didn't know what had happened. I should have thought - I should have
thought.'
Charles
moved forward and began touching the body, running his hand up and down the
stiff, bony old man's arm, as if he could chafe it back to life. 'Poor old Harry,' he said, 'poor old
Harry. I wasn't good to you, was
I? I could've been much nicer to
you. Nobody was good to you, were they? Except, perhaps, your mother - but I bet she
kept you under her thumb, didn't she?
Hung on to all your documents - wouldn't let you have them in case you
lost them - and when she died you could never find them. I was ever so fond of you. I liked what we did together. I never knew what a father was like - but
you were like a father to me. I loved
you. I did. I really did. And I never
told you. And now it's too late.'
Charles's
face crumpled, he dropped his torch and began to cry with great shrieking sobs
as he drew in his breath. Richard and
Jessica hugged and cuddled him between them and gently took his hand off the body
of Harry Winston.
'He was very
old,' said Richard, feeling foolish and useless and insulting even as he said
it. But Charles gave no sign that he
had heard. He was sitting on the floor
now, his legs out in front of him, his back resting against the wall, crying
normally. Jessica was squatting beside
him, holding his hand. Their two
torches lay beside them, forming a jagged v of light across the room that
illuminated nothing in particular.
Richard went
across to the body in the priesthole and looked at the face. There was no clue to anything in it. It was drawn and gaunt and aged and
stubbly. The lips were drawn back from
the teeth, which did not seem to fit.
Alive or dead, it looked ineffably sad.
Now, Richard thought to himself, now, surely, you must be at peace. Now you must have fulfilled what tradition
imposed on you. There's nothing more to
be asked of you. It was never an easy
task, and it became impossible. There's
no disgrace. He had an overwhelming
desire to kiss the stretched skin of the forehead, where age had flattened the
furrows into shallow lines. He did
so. It was cold. As he did so, he pointed his torch down and
caught sight of a folded piece of paper on the floor. He picked it up and took it across to Jessica and Charles. Charles was hugging his knees to his chest
and rocking silently to and fro.
'Look,' said
Richard quietly to Jessica.
'Read it to
me,' said Charles, without turning his head.
He had stopped crying and the tears were drying on his cheeks.
'It says:
"They took the house away from me, but they can't take me away from the
house,"' said Jessica.
'Is it
signed?' asked Charles.
'Yes,' said
Richard. 'The last of the Fitzwarrens.'
'He always
was a cagey bastard, that Harry,' said Charles. 'He'd never let you into any of his secrets. He always said, That's for me to know, and
you to find out. Well, we did find out,
didn't we?'
'Bloody
nearly,' said Richard.
'As much as
one can find out,' said Jessica, 'about anyone.'
'My God,
there's a body in here!' said Anne, stumbling into the room and shining her
torch straight in Harry Winston's face.
'Yes,' said
Charles, 'it's going to be one of next season's attractions - a variant on the
skeleton in the cupboard. Look, Anne, I
don't want to seem flippant or dismissive, but we've all just had quite a
shock, because we actually know this dead person - and you don't. And it's really a very long story and if you
want to hear it, then I'm sure that Richard will tell it to you on a long drive
into the past some time.'
'There
aren't going to be any more long drives into the past, because I've decided I'm
divorcing him. I've felt it coming for
a long time, but his disgusting and disgraceful behaviour this evening was the
last straw. We shall be leaving very
shortly - as soon as we've packed - well, perhaps we'll wait till it's
light. I'm sorry if I'm offending you,
but I'm sure you realise that my children and I could not possibly spend
Christmas in the same house as - as - '
'Do let me
save you the trouble of completing that sentence in a way which would
undoubtedly be grossly offensive to my friends here. I make it a matter of principle never to take sides in a matrimonial
dispute, but if not out of respect for the living, then please, out of respect
for the dead, I should like you to refrain from being abusive - though I well
understand the provocation that you have received. Your decision to spend Christmas elsewhere is, in the
circumstances, the only sensible one, I do not feel in the least offended by
it, and I shall do my utmost to speed you on your way, as a good host should -
which is what I hope I am. I am now
asking you to leave this room. All of
you. Don't worry. I'll be down in a moment.'
Anne
preceded Jessica and Richard out of the room, but Richard had barely had time
to shut the door before she turned on him and said, quite loudly, 'Go and tell
the children to start packing. I'll
tell you when I want you to come and get your bags and mine.' Then, in the direction of Jessica, whom she
did not actually look at, 'I hope we'll be having breakfast in three quarters
of an hour or so.' She swung away and
went noisily down the stairs. Jessica
said nothing, but gave Richard's hand a squeeze, and they, too, went down the
stairs, parting at the bottom for Richard to go to the boys' room.
They were
sitting up in bed, taking it in turns to hold the torch under their chins, pointing
upwards, and pulling grotesque faces for one another, laughing uproariously.
'Nigel,
Jeremy - I'm sorry about this, but we shall be leaving almost at once. Do you think you could get your things
packed? I know it won't be easy without
lights, but here's a spare torch to help you - that means one each, which
should make it all go faster. Come and
get me from the kitchen if you need help to carry anything - though, frankly,
since you got it all up here without any help and against all instructions, I'm
very much inclined to just let you get on with it.'
He had
expected some kind of questioning or some kind of protest, but to his extreme
surprise they simply stopped what they were doing, climbed out of bed and began
doing what they had been asked. He
assumed that this absolute obedience must be the product of a deep-seated sense
of guilt - actually a completely appropriate one, unlike most. It was Jeremy who stopped, half into his
underpants, and turned to him and said, 'We will get our presents, though,
won't we, Dad?' His question was echoed
in the concerned look of Nigel, balancing one-socked and one-legged in a slow,
Nijisnkian pirouette.
Richard
thought about it for a moment. What was
his own position now? Had he lost all
his rights as paterfamilias? What
rights, indeed, had he ever exercised?
Was this divorce his opportunity to become the father he had never quite
had the courage to be? The one who
actually found out what the children wanted and needed, instead of knowing
better in advance. What would Anne have
said? Should he say the exact
opposite? Or would it be better to wait
until the forces were disengaged before launching full-scale hostilities? Bugger the calculations, he thought. Certainly bugger the presents of Damocles
held over the poor kids' heads, like baubles on a Christmas tree, shiny and
just out of reach. That was the way to
turn carrots into sticks. What did he
feel? Did Anne have a right to have a
say? Reluctantly, yes. But he wouldn't give in.
'I imagine
so.' And don't drop her in it as the
ogre - none of this 'we'll have to see what your mother says.' Let the mother say it - in front of the
kids, if need be. Maybe the kids don't
feel they deserve them, either. Well,
not till Boxing Day, anyway.
Nigel had
put his foot down now (so he didn't have the stuff to be a second Nureyev,
after all - or a second Long John Silver) and Jeremy had stopped looking like a
child porn star - but they were still motionless, so Richard said, as gently as
he could, 'Get on with the packing,' and left the room.
The moment
he was outside, he regretted his generosity with the torch. Anne's door at the far end was shut fast,
and in the long, dark corridor the only light he had to guide him was a dim and
distant glow from Jessica's room. As he
approached it, fumbling, stumbling, groping, confirming with hands, feet and
knees what his brain remembered of the passage's shape, he wondered what the
light could be. Drawing level with the
fully opened door, he looked in and saw the candle they had brought up from the
kitchen. It had burnt very low, there
was only an inch-long stump projecting above the brass holder, but the flame
burnt steadily and upright, protected from the many unexpected and mysterious
draughts of the house by its tall glass tube.
Its light fell across the rumpled sheets of the bed. He went in and picked it up carefully. The movement made the flame shudder, but it
steadied quickly and burnt no less brightly.
With a certain confidence now,
he carried it before him, to light his way along the rest of the corridor and
down the imposing staircase into the hall.
The kitchen
door was open, but offered little immediate illumination. As he entered, he saw why: like some High
Catholic altar, the Aga was decked with all the candles, and Jessica was
preparing a classic English breakfast.
'Hallo,' she
said, 'wipe the mushrooms.'
'I don't
want to,' said Richard, after a moment's hesitation.
'Hoity-toity! My, we are uppity
this morning! Bet you wouldn't speak to
Anne that way.'
'You're
absolutely right. That's why we're
getting a divorce.'
'Right,
then,' said Jessica, taking bacon rashers and trimming from them the rinds and
a sliver of fat which she threw into a vast cast-iron frying pan to render down
and provide the wherewithal for frying eggs and bread, 'what is it you want
to do?'
'I'll wash
the tomatoes and halve those - then I'll do the mushrooms.'
'Okay - whoever
finishes first can start chopping the bread.
There's stale stuff there for frying, and some soda bread in the oven.'
'You have
been busy.'
'Yes. I thought: I'll show the bitch. And I will.
Besides which, I'm hungry. You
give me an appetite. Kiss me. Thanks.
Only one. I'm busy. And besides all that - when someone dies,
you have to eat. To remind yourself
that you're alive, and that there are good reasons for staying that way.'
On the altar
of the Aga, the rinds began to pop and sizzle and crinkle, shrivelling into
crispness as the fat left them and spread itself over the large cast-iron
frying pan. A savour rose from the
burnt-offering which was favourable to the nostrils of the Gods, and also to
those of mortals, especially to the youngest of humankind, who were just
bringing the first of their computers downstairs with great difficulty -
shining their way first, and then moving a few paces, and then pausing.
'Dad', they
called, cautiously at first, and then again, more loudly, since the first cry
had not been answered with irritation, or, indeed, at all. The third cry brought Richard out to help
them. Nigel held a torch in front,
Jeremy behind, so that wherever Richard trod or looked there was light for his
feet. They shifted the second computer
in the same fashion, and he left his sons to put them back in their boxes while
he went back to the mushrooms and the tomatoes.
As he was
shifting the first load on to a plate to keep them warm in the small oven, Anne
appeared in the doorway.
'You can
come and get the bags now,' she said, and then, realising what was going on,
she added, 'Oh. You shouldn't have
bothered.'
'No,' said
Jessica, 'I probably shouldn't. But I
have. Shall I put the eggs in now? Are you ready to eat?'
'I'll just
have some dry toast, thank you,' said Anne, 'but I'm sure the boys will enjoy a
cooked breakfast - it will make it feel like a holiday. My mother always spoils them like that,
too. There just isn't time in the normal
run of things, you know. Nigel,
Jeremy! Breakfast!'
They came
scampering in, and had to be sent out again, to make sure they hadn't left
their suitcases in dangerous places in the dark hallway. Under Jessica's whispered instruction,
Richard learnt the art of toasting bread on an Aga. He kept the mock bow under control as he presented it silently to
Anne, and placed knife, butter and marmalade uncommented beside her - just in
case. He agonised inwardly, but then he
asked, 'How's the hangover?'
'Stomach
upsets always leave me with quite a severe headache, as you know, Richard.'
Good eating
is always silent. Conversation proceeds
from the digestive process, and corresponds to it: analysis, the breaking down
of the world into usable components by application of the acid of thought, and
the agitation of the exchange of opinion.
Nigel and Jeremy asked for seconds and got them. Charles appeared in the middle of it all,
motioned Jessica back to her plate, cooked his own eggs and helped himself to
the rest in silence. The boys thought
about thirds, but their mother had stopped half-way through her third slice of
toast and was only toying with her fourth cup of tea. She pushed it away and stood up.
'It's time
we were going.'
Everyone
helped to pack the car - an exercise in solidarity. It all went in more easily and neatly than it had on the first
packing. There had been no more
rain. The air felt damp but fresh. The sense of being awake before anyone else
brought some excitement with it: adventure, a long journey, a destination that
would be very different, a change. Once
they were all outside, packing the car in the light from the ornate wrought
iron lamp that overhung the front steps, the tension between everyone disappeared
- they just co-operated on the job in hand.
The slamming of the rear door had the healthy finality of a decision
well-taken - even if the nature of the
decision was entirely unclear.
'When you've
gone,' said Charles, 'I'll ring the police.
I'll say I discovered it all by myself.
There's no need to mention anything about your presence at all.'
'That's a
little sad, really,' said Richard, 'being left out like that, because I'd like
to feel I was involved.'
'You were
involved,' said Jessica, 'we all know that - but there's no need for the police
to know. It'd just be a fearful
nuisance and a complication.'
'I hope,'
said Anne, standing on the edge of the group, keeping an eye on Nigel and
Jeremy, who were looking up at the house and arguing about which window had
been theirs, 'that somebody will let me in on this secret.'
'It really
is a very long and complicated story,' said Charles, 'but I'm sure that Richard
will tell it to you admirably.'
'Yes,' said
Anne, 'Richard does like telling stories.
I just wish he'd stick a little closer to reality sometimes. But perhaps that's not going to be my
problem any more. In a little while,
anyway. Nigel, Jeremy, have you been to
the toilet? Come and say goodbye.'
They had.
They did. They were packed into
the back and parcelled up in their seat-belts with their sweets and their
games. Once she had made sure they were
strapped in, Anne stood by the car and waited, watching what the others were
doing. Richard hugged Charles very
tightly, then shook his hand. Then he hugged Jessica, but without kissing
her. Anne was surprised - she had
expected more passion - but these professional women were cold. Sex, yes; love, no. They picked up a man for a night, used him,
wrecked his marriage, then cast him aside.
There they were, just holding hands.
She would never understand such people or such behaviour. Just as well she would never have anything
more to do with any of them. She didn't
like to think what part Charles had played in the whole business - he seemed
respectable, but too respectable. That
smooth patina had to be false. Well,
not her problem any more. She opened
the rear door, to check that the boys were all right, slammed it noisily to
give a hint, and marched towards the little group.
'I'll stay
with Charles until all this business is over,' Jessica was saying, 'and then I
don't know. My London job is always
open, if I want to go back. Or I may
stay on here and help Charles properly.
There are all kinds of possibilities.'
'Yes,' said
Richard, 'all kinds of possibilities.'
'What will
you do?' said Charles.
'Sort
myself out a bit, see what it is I want to do, see what it is I can
do, and negotiate a working compromise between the two.'
'Don't lose
touch for another twenty-odd years,' said Charles. 'I think we've re-acquired a taste for one another's company.'
'Yes,' said
Jessica, 'don't lose touch. I'll
definitely be in London for New Year, staying with friends. Let me give you my number. Charles - have you the necessary?'
He had - a
stub of pencil and a scrap of paper
which had a shopping list for the DIY store on it, but the back was
empty. Jessica wrote the number in
large figures that filled the whole space.
'There,' she
said, 'I'll hope to hear from you.'
'Thanks,'
said Richard. 'You will. Goodbye.'
Anne was at
his elbow. She nodded at Jessica and
Charles, as if that meant 'and everything he said, but especially
goodbye.' Then they got into the car
and closed the doors.
'Are you
sure you don't want to drive?' asked Richard.
'I take it we're going to your mother's in Reading. I really feel it might be more appropriate
if you drove.'
'You're so
stupid and so inconsiderate. You saw
how ill I was last night. I'm in no fit
state. I'm probably still over the
limit. Perhaps you're going to tell me
that you're too tired. Well, that's
your fault. Some of us actually slept
last night, instead of doing other things.
Let's go. Nigel, Jeremy - wave!'
In fact,
they all waved. It might almost have
been the Royal Family as the car swept in a large circle over the gravel, and
sped away down the long drive.
The trees
were grey and ghostly in the headlights.
Shadows danced in the bushes beside the road. Richard was always expecting one of the shadows to turn into a
fox, or another kind of animal, and dash out in front of his wheels, but they
stayed just shadows and were still again when the car and its lights had
passed.
What sort of
journey was this now? he wondered. He
had been in the past, had lived through it, had seen what it did to
people. Could he still be as attracted
to it, as trapped by it as he had been?
The daylight was a long time coming - he could not see the things he had
spoken about with such frenetic enthusiasm on the way down. That road of escape - the tunnel into that
particular cage - was closed to him.
His wife, on the other hand, was returning to the lion's den: the parental
home. He knew the things he had been
told about Anne's early life, and wondered at the force of tradition in luring
her back to a place which she had left with such thankfulness.
'Don't drive
so fast,' she said, 'there's no hurry.'
He slowed
down, and found that he was enjoying the landscape for itself. All the meaning he had found before was
still there, but he no longer felt the compulsion to articulate and communicate
it: it just worked on him and filled him with emotion, rather than
knowledge. Slowly, greyness began to
replace blackness as the dominant tone of the surroundings.
'So what was
this story all about that kept you up half the night, and seems to have led you
to Jessica's bed?'
Richard had
thought she had fallen asleep, had forgotten she was in the car with him. The boys had dropped off almost the minute
he had driven away. What could he give
her as an answer, without telling the whole story again, with all the surmises,
the hopes, fears and recognitions of self that it involved? How could he recapture it for her? He felt he ought at least to try a little,
to be honest with her, and fair.
'It was a
story about the past,' he said. 'About
the strength of the past.'
'Oh,' said
Anne, 'about anybody's past in particular?'
'About one
person in particular, but about the effect of the past in general.'
'And what
does the past do in general?'
'It misleads
you.'
'In what
way?'
'It says all
the good things are behind you, and gone for ever.'
'And of
course they're all in the future - with Jessica.'
Richard was
silent for a short while, because he wanted to be honest. He wanted to think about what he was going
to say, and how he was going to say it.
He didn't want to respond to provocation.
'No,' he
said, 'they're not all in the future either.
There are some in both places.
But the only place you can enjoy the good things is in the present. Wherever they are, you have to bring them
into the present. That's not always
easy, but it can be done.'
'Is this the
sort of conversation you were having with your friends? I'm glad I was asleep through most of it.'
The world
was grey and empty. They had reached a
motorway now. A Christmas Day
motorway. Roads might have decorations
in the windows of the houses - the service areas here would have the regulation
tree and tinsel, but so far away you'd never see it from the carriageway. Motorways just passed through, without ever
experiencing. They joined past and
future, by-passing the present. As he
drove, Richard remembered that very intense present he had experienced with
Jessica.
'I don't
know what you're going to do, when we get to my mother's. I can't say I'm looking forward to spending
Christmas with you - really, I haven't the slightest intention of doing so.'
'Then what
do you expect me to do? Drive home and
spend Christmas on my own? Or drive
back to Charles and the police?'
'Oh no. You
can't drive anywhere. You can't leave me without the car.'
'So how am I
to transport myself away from you?'
'That's your
problem - you should have thought of that before.'
'Before
what?'
'Before. But perhaps the boys
will want to have you around - perhaps they'll need you to help them play with
their presents.'
'Maybe I'd
like that, too.'
'I'm not
sure that what you'd like comes into it.'
'I don't
think it has done very much in the past.'
'That's your
opinion - I've lost count of the concessions I've made to you and your ways -
your sloppiness, your untidiness, your unreliability - I wouldn't be surprised
if you'd already lost the phone number that woman gave you.'
For once, he
thought about what she was saying. He
didn't need to go into elaborate defences, he didn't need to excuse himself and
deny the truth - this didn't have to be a battle in the course of the life-long
war. This could be a discussion, a
dispassionate piece of analysis.
Theoretically, the war was about to be over; the ceasefire had been
agreed, the armistice would not be long, and then would come the negotiations
over the peace-treaty - which might not be too pleasant. But now was a time to take stock.
He thought
about the garage, filled with his past, the garage that had all that symbolic
value locked up in it; the past, that he didn't use, couldn't face up to, and
was loth to throw away. Would he ever
'deal with' the boxes? Married or not
married? Was he going to jettison all
those un-realised potentialities? He
thought not. He thought he might
explore them - whether in reality or metaphorically. He had to be richer than his life or his house showed him to
be. There were secret rooms. That even he had never entered. Boxes whose contents he could not know -
might never know - and yet they belonged to him and made him what he was. But he had to find out what he was - he
could not take someone else's word for it.
Anne - did
she know what or who she was? She
seemed to - to some degree: wife,
mother, controller of the household, active principle, taker of decisions,
organiser. She defined herself more
easily by her actions than he ever could.
He didn't define himself - defining meant limiting, leaving out,
excluding. He felt he wanted to include
things, to be more than he was. Actions
alone would never be enough.
His silence
and lack of response were unusual. Anne
didn't really know how to cope. She was
tired. The grey world outside the car
didn't demand involvement. The regular
speed and the hum of the engine lulled her.
She joined her children in sleep.
Richard
enjoyed the solitude and the peace. He
felt useful and purposive - after all,
he was driving everybody to their Christmas.
And even if Anne's mother's place was as unendurable as he knew it was
going to be, there had to be pubs he could escape to - neutral
meeting-places. The nuclear family,
like the nuclear deterrent, was not the end of the world.
As he drove,
he thought about the story he had explored with his friends from the past who had
become his friends in the present. He
thought about the way they had related to one another, and to the story they
had told between them. He thought, most
of all, about Harry Winston.
It seemed
strange to give him that name, which for so many reasons should never have been
his - certainly not when his real name was so important to his essence. Richard's own name - surname or Christian
name - only identified him in a very
technical sense, as regarded the outside world. It had nothing to do with what he was or what he could be. His name was familiar and fitted easily,
like a pair of trousers, shoes or gloves: a new one would feel odd for a while,
but could also be exciting, and open up new possibilities. But Harry had lived a lie, had had to live a
lie, had let himself be defined by an enemy and persecutor; even though he had
taken revenge on him, he had not been free of him to the end of his days.
Harry had
never been free. Not from the
start. Born into a cage. And then, in a strange reversal of the usual
image, he had become a tiger pacing round the bars of the cage on the outside,
yearning to get back in. He had been
just as trapped as before - that was clear.
An indissoluble tie linked him to the house and its surroundings. It was not, Richard thought, the physical
tie of mother-love (whichever one was his mother), but something much more
complex and harder to describe. Not at
first, perhaps, when he may have believed that there was some chance of proving
who he was (who was he?) and becoming who he was meant to be - but as time went
by, and it became clear that he could only ever look on from the outside: at
that stage, description of what was going on in him became difficult.
But maybe it
didn't. Maybe Harry was far from being
the only person who spent his life walking round his potentialities without
realising them. Maybe there were many
people who clung to a past that was gone, instead of looking for a future that
was there, somewhere. He was a ghost,
even while he lived, because he was dead, and he re-visited the scenes of what
should have been his life. In some
ways, one could admire his tenacity, his single-mindedness. In other ways, one pitied him, in still
other ways one was deeply annoyed by his stubbornness and obstinacy. And one was also haunted, in the mind, by
the unresolved mystery, which, in fact, he shared with everyone. Who are we?
What were we? Who will we
become?
He noticed
the turn to his mother-in-law's road late, and swung into it in a wide arc which jolted Anne awake.
'Typical,'
she said, 'you never get any better.
Will you never change?'
'Not while
I'm with you, I'm afraid,' said Richard, without any malice or bitterness in
his voice. It was just true.
'I take it
you'll be moving out?'
'Sooner or
later - probably sooner.'
'Into some
rented room - the way things were when we met.'
'Yes - in
some ways I'll be moving back into my past.'
'The carefree bachelor!'
'But only in
some ways. I also have to move into my future.'
'The future
comes, whether we want it or not - you don't have to move into it.'
'That's not
true, Anne. Look at your mother's
house, and how long she's lived there.
When did the future last have anything to do with it?'
'She has the
outside painted every five years, and she had it re-wired only three years
ago. The front room was re-decorated
last Christmas - don't you remember the terrible smell of paint?'
'I don't
think you quite understand me, but it doesn't matter. Well, it does, actually, but I don't think I'm going to make you
understand, so I suppose we'd better just stop talking and go in.'
'I'd like to
go in first myself, if you don't mind, just so I can explain to her what's
going on, and why we're here and so on, and I think it'd probably be much
better if you weren't there while I did that.'
'Of course.
She's your mother, I'm glad to say.'
'There's no
need for cheap remarks like that, Richard.'
'I have no
idea what kind of remarks you'll be making about me inside, Anne - I thought I
might get one in in advance.'
'I think you
can trust me not to say anything that isn't true.'
'I can trust
you not to say anything that you don't think is true. I've never known you be consciously malicious.'
She
obviously wanted to slam the door, but restrained herself, in order to avoid
waking up the boys.
Left alone
in the suburban street, Richard looked around.
Christmas Day, and the Christmas tree lights flashing - some merely
twinkling, others just shining fixedly.
House upon house, family upon family, celebrating something in which
they believed in theory, but which in most cases was a disaster in practice,
relieved only by the undeniable delights of oral gratification, for children
and adults. Bugger Father Christmas,
bring on the nuts and the dates and the figs and the pudding, till we can't
move! A pity they put the family bit
first. If they announced that it was a
festival of gross over-indulgence to begin with, and that was made the prime
reason for it, then the family members would discover that they got on far
better with each other with full stomachs and tipsy heads - whereas in the
normal course of things, the alcohol only further inflamed passions already
aroused, and the arguments took away appetites - either in reality, or for the
sake of a good exit-line in the well-known Christmas drama 'Martyr and
Persecutor', loosely adapted from the classic, A Christmas Quarrel.
Anne opened
the door and slid in beside him.
'Well,' she
said, 'Mother's prepared to have you in the house - '
'But I sleep
in the potting shed.'
' - as you
can imagine, she said that she'd known it wouldn't last - she didn't think you
were good enough for me - '
'Who did she
expect you to marry? God? Even the Virgin Mary didn't actually marry
Him - she got fobbed off with Joseph - '
'Do you mind
keeping your voice down? I don't want
to wake up the boys. Mother said that
although all this was distressing, she thought it was probably for the best in
the long run.'
'That must
be the first time she and I have ever agreed.'
'Will you be
seeing Jessica again? Mother was
curious.'
'She
is. I've often said so - you've always
denied it.'
'There's no
need to be flippant,' said Anne.
'I wasn't.'
'Or
insulting.'
'I
wasn't. I was being witty.'
'That's what
you think. Mother also said, she hoped
you'd learn a lesson out of all this.'
'I have,'
said Richard. 'That's what last night
was.'
'Really?'
said Anne, bristling visibly.
'Yes,' said
Richard. 'You may find it hard to
believe, or think I'm trying to hurt you, but I'm not. That's what it was - a lesson. One huge history lesson.'