SONS AND LOVERS
Quentin jumped out of the cab in Greek Street in the midst of a summer downpour.
She had invited him, no, summoned him to The Gay Hussar in Soho, the small, chic restaurant much frequented by the literary and political trades. The note, written on her personal letterhead, offered no gentle could we meet, or please RSVP, simply the date and time, one o’clock, Monday 8 August, 1960, yes, just as if he might show up a year late. He was fifteen minutes late; in her eyes, no doubt, a breach of courtesy.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Castle. We gave Madame your favourite table when she told us she was meeting you,’ said Anton, whipping out a clean white napkin.
Quentin took the hint, pressing it gently over his face, the water dripping from his dark hair and quickly cleaning off his glasses. He was no longer a gaunt young man; his height and broad shoulders carried his weight well, though his face was more memorable than handsome, the high thin nose like a mountain ridge, a man in the prime of life, at the top of his profession, respected, even feared by his peers, prosperous, confident, secure, no longer the sort of person who let others finish his sentences. All true, but the very sight of Enid Sherrill reduced him to feeling like the juvenile lead in a bad play, wheezy, adenoidal and gauche. ‘Please bring me a double martini,’ he said to the waiter as he handed back the napkin.
He assumed that Enid Sherrill had planned to put him ill at ease even if he had been on time. Enid already had her menu face down, her cocktail before her and her first cigarette lit. She was hatless, her hair dull and cut short, and she wore a navy-blue suit enlivened by brass buttons. Her eyebrows were finely arched and pencilled in with a firm hand, dark against her pale skin. Her lipstick looked like a tiny red seam between her sharp nose and her sharp chin. She was thinner than ever. She removed her cat’s eye glasses.
‘How good to see you again,’ he offered after his flustered, mumbled apologies and excuses, and took his seat. ‘You only used to drink sherry.’
‘That was when I had your father to look after. Someone had to stay sober.’
‘Ah.’ He opened the menu.
Though it was August, both he and Miss Sherrill nodded to a few of their passing compatriots and competitors, publishers, editors, other agents in The Gay Hussar, some of whom regarded them quizzically. As well they might, thought Quentin. Enid’s leaving Castle Literary and opening her own firm had provided the insular world of London publishing with a good deal of gossip in 1956, including the rumour that Quentin had evicted her. This never happened. She left of her own accord after Quentin moved into his father’s office. The transition was rocky, their parting acrimonious, but Quentin was satisfied. Enid left Castle Literary to start her own firm, which had not exactly prospered. Their paths had seldom crossed, save for Albert’s funeral the last year, where Enid had been kind to Margaret and Florence and Rosamund, but only civil to Quentin.
‘I hope all goes well with you, Miss Sherrill.’
‘It does, but that’s not why I’m here. The usual,’ she said to the waiter who brought Quentin’s martini.
‘Yes, madam,’ the waiter replied without a blink, ‘and that would be the …’
‘The asparagus and bacon salad for a starter, and the duck.’
The waiter made a great ado that he had not remembered, and Quentin knew she did not eat here often enough to know the waiter, or to have a usual. She was grandstanding, but why? The waiter did in fact know Quentin’s usual. He left them, and Quentin made some remark about the food at The Gay Hussar, paprika and so on. Past that, it was her show and he was prepared to sit in silence and drink till she led.
‘Miss Marr tells me Castle Literary prospers,’ she offered, billowing out a plume of smoke.
This surprised him. Did she often see Miss Marr? ‘Yes. Everyone in the building is doing quite well. Last year Number 11 collectively hired a day porter.’
‘Collectively is a rather suspect expression in these Cold War days.’
Had the old girl gone anti-Commie bats? ‘He is a sergeant who fought with my brother at El Alamein. Poor Mrs Rackwell died last March and we now have a Jamaican charlady who sings at night.’
‘I suppose Rackwell finally killed her.’
‘Actually, they found her on the floor at the foot of the stairwell one morning when the first people came to work. Her heart just gave out.’ Of all the tenants at Number 11, Quentin alone had gone to her shabby funeral, stunned, disgusted, really, to see old Rackwell sobbing, supported on either side by young women, daughters, presumably. Quentin sat through the service, but left without offering Rackwell any morsel of sympathy for his loss. He regretted going at all. Quentin polished off his martini while Miss Sherrill nattered on-and-dreary-dull-on, professional gossip mostly. He was annoyed with her tone of carping superiority, remembering it all too well from his early days with the firm. In the guise of a sparrow, Enid Sherrill clothed the instincts of a hawk.
‘And I see Louisa Partridge is her own little publishing factory,’ said Enid, stubbing out her cigarette energetically. ‘She alone must be filling your firm’s coffers.’
‘Yes.’ Might she be hinting she’d like to quit her own foundering firm and return to Castle? Preposterous. He had crammed three young agents into what was once Enid’s office. The thought of having her nearby gave him heartburn just to think of it. ‘Louisa’s bought a house, a villa, in the hills above Fiesole.’
‘I’m surprised you’re not with her. On holiday. I mean, it is August and you and she are such great friends.’
‘I bought a country place in St Ives. The family is there now. I’ve only just returned to London.’
‘I remember your mother loved St Ives. Years ago—’ She lit another cigarette with a small silver lighter ‘—when Robert was a boy. How is dear Margaret? Still mourning Albert?’ She nodded to the waiter who placed their dishes before them.
‘It’s only been a year. She’s used to mourning.’
‘And Florence and the children?’
‘Fine. You saw them at my father’s funeral last summer.’
Using her fork she poked about in her Spargelsalat as though looking for bugs. ‘I fear I was rather rude to you at Albert’s funeral, Quentin. I felt his loss terribly, and I was more upset than I should have expected to be. We were together for a very long time, you know. Thirty years.’
‘I know.’
‘I was angry. I thought if Albert had gone on working, he might have lived longer. He ought not to have retired.’
‘If this is an apology, Miss Sherrill, please consider it accepted.’
‘Yes, well …’ She finished her cocktail, leaving the cherry to loll in the glass. ‘Albert ought to have been pleased with what you’ve brought to the firm. His taste was not unerring, but I doubt he would have had the vision to take on those colonial writers whose work you are championing.’
‘You do my father a disservice, Miss Sherrill. In his day he was equally daring. Sydney Thaxton might have been a genius, but his work was difficult to place, and he was constantly changing, and that alone cost him the loyalty of publishers. My father protected Thaxton, and advanced his work even after his death.’
‘And you have done the same for Francis Carson. Can it really be ten years since he died? How fortunate that he left so much work behind. An Inconvenient Wife resurrected his reputation, and the second one … what’s it called?’
‘September Street.’
‘Yes, just out last spring, conquered the critics, save for Kingsley Amis and his ilk.’
‘There are always nay-sayers,’ he replied. He had the terrible feeling that he was about to be grilled here and served up like the Hungarian foie gras and caramelized onions on his plate.
‘Rather prominent ones in this case, but who’s to care when the sales, British and American, are going so well? You must be pleased with yourself. And I hear it’s picked up a very nice little film offer. Was that through your friend?’
‘My friend?’
‘Fifi or something.’
‘Gigi Fischer. She is a very reputable film agent.’ He stopped with that.
‘After what the Americans did to Some of These Days, I’m surprised Mrs Carson agreed to a film.’
‘I got a No Bollocks clause inserted into the contract,’ he offered by way of a joke.
‘I must say I thought September Street rather threadbare – I mean the story, not the writing. The writing was some of Carson’s best. But the story, you know? Orphaned girl sent to live with her bedridden, hideous old grandmother and her lecherous uncle. He has his wicked way with her against her will. She falls in love with a local lout, and it all goes wrong. They could have called it Tess of Broadstairs.’
What in God’s name was Enid up to? Quentin signalled for another martini, not caring that in drinking this much at lunch she would no doubt accuse him of Following in Father’s Footsteps as the old song had it. His wrist began to itch. Hives. He scratched discreetly under his watchband.
‘I’ll come to the point, Quentin. I’ve asked you here because I do not want there to be any misunderstanding between us. Whatever you, personally, may think of me, I shall never let it be said that Enid Sherrill acted out of spite. I wish to be quite clear from the beginning.’
Spite? The skin all along his arm prickled. ‘What are you talking about, Enid?’
‘Lady Sybil Dane. You remember Francis Carson’s memorial service, no doubt.’
‘I am not likely to forget that day.’
‘She has approached me to represent her book. No, more than that, I have taken her on as a client. There, it’s said, isn’t it?’
‘She’s written a book?’
‘Yes, a memoir of those war years that she spent with Carson.’
‘He lived at Woodlands with his wife and children too.’
‘True, but as you might expect … well, it is Sybil’s memoir, and Mrs Carson, I’m sorry to say, comes off as something of a cow, certainly bovine, good for carnal reasons and bearing children. An American of earthy appetites and no real understanding.’
‘And what is Lady Sybil’s role?’
Enid Sherrill stubbed out her cigarette, and gave him a look she had practised on Quentin since he first entered the agency, silently accusing him of crashing stupidity, of being so dim-witted that he should feel the top of his head for donkey’s ears. ‘Naturally Lady Sybil and Francis Carson were free spirits who had deep, distinguished, literary discussions when they were not rollicking in the lovely green meadows and by idyllic springs, making love in the folly. She was his saviour and muse, she fostered his talent, and he loved her deeply. Don’t be an ass,’ she harumphed in Albert’s old manner.
‘Why am I here?’ he asked, hoping to truss up a bit of dignity.
‘I wanted to tell you myself that I have taken Lady Sybil on as a client. Which I have just done. I shall see her book through its first printing, and then retire. Majorca, I think. Someplace warm.’
‘How nice for you.’
‘Don’t patronize me. I’m certain Lady Sybil brought the book to me to spite the Castles, knowing that you and I had quarrelled bitterly.’
‘It wasn’t bitter for me, Miss Sherrill.’
‘It was for me,’ she replied, taking a bite.
‘Miss Sherrill, Enid, I am finding all this rather hard to take in!’
‘I, on the other hand, have thought it through. That’s why I asked you to lunch.’
The waiter brought their main courses, whisked the other plates away, did his usual fanfare with the pepper, clicked his Hungarian heels and left them, but not before Quentin asked for a bottle of wine.
‘None for me,’ said Miss Sherrill. She cut her food into tiny bites which she ate quickly. ‘There will be a lot of gossip, Quentin, spicy tittering among the ink-slinging trades, the very people who crowded Woodlands ten years ago to drink Sir Sanford’s single malt, and bid a garish farewell to the late Francis Carson. How well I remember.’ She emitted a heavy stage-sigh. ‘When Lady Sybil’s book comes out, people will choose sides. There will be those who think Lady Sybil Dane is a self-serving hag, and those who will be glad to see the late Francis Carson get something of a come-down.’
‘A come-down?’
‘Well, she paints herself as his muse, his nurse, his confidante, his soulmate, his lover, naturally. As if without her, without her love and devotion, and dedication, he could not possibly have written a word of his masterpiece, Hay Days. I’d call that a come-down.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘Hay Days was mediocre at best, Lady Sybil’s memoir is better than Carson’s Hay Days, I don’t mean the writing, her writing is execrable, but the story is far livelier, not to say prurient.’ One little bite followed another between her thin, over-red lips. ‘The Land Girls are mostly gone from the story, Francis sleeps with no one but Sybil, and presumably his wife since one of their daughters was born there, I believe.’
‘Yes. Catherine in ’44.’
‘In any event, there’s quite a bit of ecstatic, not to say athletic, sexual goings-on.’
‘And does Lady Sybil include all the other men and women she slept with?’
‘No need to be catty with me, Quentin. I am representing the book. I do not pretend to like it. However, in answer to your question, the answer is no. Mostly the book is the great lady’s great love affair with the great novelist.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, thinking back to that day at Woodlands, ‘that her book could be called The Beloved Mistress.’
‘That’s not the title, but yes. I myself am dismayed by her lack of discretion, but it will be published. She’s still quite powerful, you know, though she has nothing to do with her late husband’s newspaper empire. When Sir Sanford died, his children got the empire. She got the money and the house, much to the frothing rage of the rest of the family.’
Quentin’s digestion roiled. ‘Why am I here, Enid?’
‘I did not want you to think I acted out of spite. If I did not take on Lady Sybil’s book, someone else would have.’
‘Yes.’
‘I am hoping it will make a great deal of money for my retirement.’
‘You did not act out of spite. Fine. Why am I here?’
Enid drank her water. ‘I assume you still see something of Francis Carson’s wife. She is your client.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, feeling like a prisoner in chains replying to a be-wigged, black-robed judge.
‘You should prepare her for this. It will not be pretty. It is an unfortunate book. Whatever one might say of Francis Carson – if I may offer a personal opinion – there was always about him a fundamental brightness, a need for applause that was part of his charm, until he got disgustingly drunk, of course. But short of that, he cast a sort of glow and people were happy to warm themselves in it. All of Carson’s charm, his zest, that sense of spectacle and high spirits is lost in Sybil’s book, and he comes off looking rather like her little lapdog, a Peke with a pen, you might say.’
‘God, is it really that bad?’
‘It is. Francis Carson emerges from these pages looking like a fool. Lady Sybil writes as though she’s defending a genius, that Hay Days was his masterpiece, a misunderstood masterpiece, its reputation clouded because of his being a conscientious objector. Oh, and she has much to say about that too, about his witch of a Quaker mum, and dear old failed-intellectual father whose literary aspirations were the heartbreaking basis for The Moth and the Star. Francis’s schoolmaster father enjoyed caning his students till they bled and whimpered. He enjoyed beating Francis too, for that matter, took a real pleasure in all that pain. Albert told me Francis lived in fear of his father, of both his parents, for years. Francis could never quite squeeze out from under his father’s baleful glare until Claire came into his life. She gave him courage he did not have on his own. A powerful woman.’ Enid chewed thoughtfully. ‘Albert feared Claire Carson. He disliked all writers’ wives, of course, but he actually feared her. Did you know that?’
‘No. He didn’t like Americans. He called her the FMB. The Foul-Mouthed Beauty.’
‘Or bitch. One tends to denigrate what one fears.’
‘I should never have thought he feared or respected her.’
‘Well, he did. Albert knew that were it not for his wife, Carson would still be in Broadstairs teaching nasty boys and bedding local matrons. She is a remarkable woman, but I’m sure you know that.’
‘I’m surprised to hear you say something nice about her, Miss Sherrill.’
‘You’ve always misunderstood me. My feelings about Mrs Carson when I spoke to you the night of the memorial service were candid, but they were not personal. I cared not one whit for adultery, if that’s what it was – mind you, I am not asking. I thought only for the good of the firm. I am no longer a part of that firm, and I can allow myself the luxury of personal feelings.’
‘Had you always lived without them?’ he asked, suddenly curious. ‘Without personal feelings?’
‘My life has no bearing here. I’m trying to give you a notion of what this book will do to Francis Carson’s reputation, and to his wife, his family.’
‘Thank you. I mean it, I’m grateful for the warning.’
‘You should know –’ She took a deep breath, as though plunging underwater ‘—it’s dedicated to the boy, though he’s not really a boy any more, is he? Twenty or twenty-one.’
‘Michael.’
‘Yes.’
Grim premonition gnawed at him. Quentin bolted his wine. ‘Sybil Dane always brewed a lethal cocktail, equal parts flattery and seduction, with a fine bright cherry of her wealth gleaming at the centre. Frank succumbed to it, and so did Michael.’
‘How could he resist?’ Enid remarked. ‘He’s living it up at Oxford, I can’t remember which college, but trust me, he stays on there thanks to her money. And, of course, there were all those holidays abroad with her and Sir Sanford, the yacht. Even after Sir Sanford died, well, there were still holidays abroad, only not on the yacht. One of Dane’s sons got the yacht, but Sybil bought a flat in Paris, and she rents a villa at Lake Como in the summers. That’s where they are now in August. She and Michael.’
‘How do you know all that?’ He took a long drink.
‘How do you think? She adores talking about him. Sybil entertains Michael and all his young friends with extravagant weekends at Woodlands. She has invited me to come as well.’
‘And will you?’
‘God, no. I can’t bear the woman. He is estranged from his mother, isn’t he?’
Quentin nodded. ‘Michael broke his mother’s heart. Again and again. But the last, the worst, the day after he left school – with Lady Sybil’s chauffeur waiting for him at the door – he packed a bag, left Claire’s house for good, and moved to Woodlands. Claire and Michael have scarcely spoken since, in now two or three years. You can’t imagine how it pains her.’ He fought the urge to confess more, but he knew if he started, the whole would come tumbling out, and that this unsympathetic woman had no wish to hear his truths. He was already in her debt for this forewarning; his pride would not allow him to ask for her pity or understanding. ‘Dedicating the book to Michael is Sybil’s final blow to Claire.’
Miss Sherrill finished her lunch, or as much as she was prepared to eat, and laid her knife and fork decidedly on the plate. ‘It may not be the final blow, Quentin, that is what I am trying to tell you. It’s worse. The dedication reads To Michael Carson, ami de mon coeur. Yes, as well you might go rather pale.’
‘What does that mean, exactly?’
‘He figures in the book.’
‘Michael is the son Sybil never had.’
‘And he has taken the place of his father.’
‘Surely not in her bed!’ Quentin burst out, embarrassed to see he had collected a few oblique glances in the restaurant.
Again she harrumphed in a way that recalled Albert Castle. ‘At her age, she’s probably sixty, it’s flattering to Lady Sybil to be thought of as something of a siren. That is why I wanted to meet with you. You had best brace Mrs Carson for this book. She will be pained. Hurt. By the way, Lady Sybil says outright in her book that Michael was born before his parents were married. If that’s libel, it will have to be edited out, but perhaps it’s true.’
‘That bastard!’
‘Yes, well. Enough said.’ Enid lit a cigarette. ‘There’s a good deal of that sort of thing, more innuendo, probably, less fact.’
‘Is it too late to talk with her, Lady Sybil, I mean, maybe to convince her to—’
Again Enid gave him the look that suggested he should feel about for donkey’s ears. ‘Can you imagine Sybil Dane listening to such a plea? Agreeing to it?’
‘No. It would only give her pleasure.’
‘Exactly. I’m sure they’ve already taken pleasure in the pain they know they will inflict. They’re that sort of people.’
‘They?’
‘Michael too. He’s like Lady Sybil in that regard.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘Oh yes. He might look like his father, but he has nothing of Francis Carson’s charm. I’ve seen enough of young Michael to get his measure. And I shall have to see more, no doubt. In becoming Lady Sybil’s agent, I’ve left myself at her beck and call. She loves to take up one’s time, and once she gets her talons in, it’s difficult to extract oneself. She’s insufferable.’ She signalled the waiter. ‘I must be going.’
‘Dessert?’ asked the waiter, touting the poppy-seed strudel.
They both said no thank you in unison, and she laid money in the dish. A good deal of money. One did not want to be seen counting sixpences at The Gay Hussar.
Quentin swallowed his pride in an audible gulp. ‘Might I ask to see a copy of the manuscript,’ he ventured, ‘please?’
‘I have one with me.’
His face fell, and he stumbled about in inadequate thanks. ‘You astonish me, Enid! Would you have given it to me even if I hadn’t asked?’
‘Yes. I have it with me. That’s why I asked to meet you. To give it to you.’
‘To give it to me,’ he repeated, dumbfounded.
‘It’s a second carbon, so blurry here and there, but you will understand.’
‘I – I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I don’t know what to say.’
‘I have a favour to ask of you as well. It’s nothing to do with the carbon copy, I bring you that of my own free will and because I dislike Sybil and what she is up to, though I shall certainly represent her book. I need the money. No, here’s my question, Quentin. When I retire next year may I tell my authors that Castle Literary will take them back? I know they’re a rather rag-tag bunch, certainly by Castle standards, but they were loyal to me when I left the firm, and I fear another agent might not …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Absolutely, Enid. I will take them all back. Naturally,’ he added, knowing full well that had she requested this before this very moment, he would have turned her down.
She pulled from the bag beside her a fat parcel, wrapped in paper and bound with string. ‘Like chops from a butcher shop,’ she noted with some asperity. ‘It will have to be edited down for publication, for libel. Perhaps the most egregious parts will come out, but I doubt the overall tone will change.’
‘This is very kind of you. Thank you again.’ He sought something stronger, but words eluded him. ‘On behalf of the firm.’
She gave a paltry laugh. ‘Oh, the firm!’
‘And Mrs Carson.’
She put her glasses back on and watched the summer rain sluice down the windows. Then she turned back to him, smoke escaping from her thin red lips.
‘You are still in love with her, I take it.’
‘I am,’ he said, surprised at how the simple admission relaxed him, how the simple, spoken truth could create such a feeling of release, relief. He might have waxed on about their ten-year love affair and the happiness Claire had brought him if Miss Sherrill hadn’t cut him off.
‘Then speak for yourself, Quentin. Not for the firm.’
‘Thank you, personally. I’m grateful. Thank you on Claire’s behalf.’ He thrashed awkwardly as she no doubt meant him to. But then he gathered such gravitas he had earned at thirty-five. ‘You are a gallant woman, Enid, and kind, and I’m sorry if I misjudged you.’
‘Oh, you didn’t misjudge how I felt about you, Quentin. The minute you came into the firm, I knew what would happen. I knew he would always love you better than he loved me.’
‘My father?’
‘Of course your father! Who else? You are surprised that he loved you? Or are you surprised that he loved me?’ When Quentin did not reply, she went on. ‘Well, perhaps he didn’t love me, but I loved him. I couldn’t marry him, of course, but I wanted a partnership, a different sort of marriage, you might say. I told him if he didn’t make me a partner, I would leave him. That story you’ve heard, no doubt.’
‘Yes.’
‘I got the partnership, but it was … what’s the term, pyrrhic? A pyrrhic victory. Albert could not be intimate with an equal, and by the time he took up with Louisa Partridge, our affair was over, but our partnership continued.’
‘Yet you remained dedicated to the firm, and to him,’ said Quentin, suddenly seeing the past bathed in a new light.
‘He and Castle Literary were my life’s work. All I shall have to show for my life’s work.’ Behind her cat’s eye glasses her eyes filled with mirth, a quality Quentin could not remember seeing in all the years he had known her. ‘In truth, I loved dear old fascinating, fornicating, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-spouting, tipsy, misadventurous, unfaithful Albert.’
‘I would not have guessed.’
Some vestige of a smile tugged at her thin lips, as she rose and picked up her handbag. ‘Of course not. I am not indiscreet. That was Albert’s failing. Don’t let it be yours as well.’
LE VOLEUR DU TEMPS
If ever, truly, there were a time-torn man, Quentin Castle was he. His time was torn, but his heart was not. He might count as a faithless husband, but he was a constant lover, even though he had meant to give Claire up, tried to give her up.
The day after Florence’s announcement of the impending baby, guilt-racked, and miserable, he cancelled his few appointments, told Miss Marr he was going to the London Library to read, and took the train to Oxford. I mustn’t … we cannot … rang in his head and his heart on the train, on the bus to Polstead Road. I mustn’t … we cannot even when Claire flung open the door and flew into his arms, pulled him inside. I mustn’t … we cannot as she loosened his tie and pressed him against the closed door, and his hands slid over her body beneath a wrapper secured only with a silken tie. I mustn’t … we cannot … I can’t … he murmured against her soft lips, and full breasts, and after that, even though I mustn’t, we cannot, could not. Florence, they were pulling each other’s clothes off, as they stumbled backward towards the bedroom, and though Claire nodded, weeping, yes, yes, I know, I understand … even as they tumbled into bed and stayed there till they heard Mary and Catherine on the stairs coming home from school.
Claire scurried into some trousers and a sweater, ran into the living room, gathered up Quentin’s clothes in a flash, and pitched them to him in the bathroom just as the girls tore into the flat. Mary pounded on the bathroom door. Quentin smiled as he opened the door. Mary was the image of Claire, fair hair and flashing blue eyes.
He found Claire in the tiny kitchen, the kettle on, her hair tumbled down around her face, eyes alight, her whole being glowing. He sat at the small table by the window and opened his arms to her. She came to him and he pressed his face against her breasts while she stroked his hair and whispered endearments.
‘I just want to walk away from everything, from every-one, and be with you,’ he said, breathing in the earthy scent of love. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’
‘Of course you do. And you know you can’t walk away. You’d hate yourself.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘You would! You’re a good, a decent, a fine man, Quentin. What do you think drew me to you from the beginning? Why do you think I love you? You’re not false or cruel.’
‘I’m false now.’
‘But you’re not cruel. And you cannot leave your wife and child.’
‘What about us? I can’t give you up. I can’t lose you. I have been blind, deaf and dumb, and lame, ignorant and unknowing, stupidly treading the paths already marked out for me, and suddenly! Suddenly, I’m alive and awake and rejoicing!’ He stroked her back and buttocks, wishing they could just retreat to the bedroom again. ‘You are everything to me. I want to marry you.’
‘No. You don’t.’
‘I do.’
‘I don’t want to be married. I want to be loved.’
‘But I want both, Claire. You and always you. Only you.’
‘You have me. You and only you.’ She pulled a flimsy kitchen chair up close to him, and their hands entwined. She still wore her wedding ring, but her blue eyes were bright with love. ‘For the first time I know what it is to be loved for who I am, not what I can do or be or make easier for someone, but for myself. I can’t lose you either, Quentin. We can have each other. We must.’
‘How can we have each other if I am married to Florence?’
‘If you left Florence, you would one day hate yourself, and you would hate me.’
‘Never.’
‘We don’t need to be married to love each other, to be true to each other, to keep what we have, our love, and let it strengthen us.’
‘Only I would go home to Florence, and you—’ He nodded towards her left hand, her wedding ring ‘—stay married in spirit to Frank.’
‘You want me to take it off?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I do.’
‘All right, then.’ She removed the ring which left a pale shadow on her finger. She put it in her pocket. Quentin took his own wedding ring from his hand and went to put it in his vest pocket, but she stopped him. ‘You keep yours on, Quentin. Florence and the baby are one part of your life, the honourable part, and I am another.’
‘My love for you is every bit as honourable, more so, than what I feel for Florence.’
‘Then keep it so, and love me. I don’t need you to make an honest woman of me. I don’t want to marry anyone. Not even you, dear, and I don’t want to be the cause of anyone else’s unhappiness, but I do want to be loved.’
‘I love you.’
‘Then that’s all I ask of you. I need you to love me, to love me best and always. Can you do that, dear?’
‘I can. I do. I will. I promise.’
‘Then I shall love you best and always. I promise.’ Her lovely face suffused with joy. ‘As long as we love each other …’
‘Best and always. And forever. I promise.’
‘And forever,’ she repeated as the kettle began its noisy shriek. ‘We mustn’t lose each other, and we must bear whatever comes. Can you bear it, dear?’
‘I can bear anything for you.’
These were, as it turned out, solemn vows. From that day forward, Claire and Quentin had borne everything, and though they had endured struggles, they had not lost each other.
But in that first year – and however ecstatic, fulfilled he was in Claire’s arms and the light of her eyes – each time Quentin returned home to Florence, he plunged into an abyss of self-loathing. Rosamund, Albert, Margaret all greeted the prospect of the baby with undiluted joy, and Florence’s happiness in her advancing pregnancy was an agonizing reproach to him. He tried to be especially kind to Florence, and she, in return, was pleased, touched, warm, sending him into further paroxysms of guilt. Florence showed him each evening how she was learning to knit. Quentin thought the clicking of the needles would drive him mad.
But after baby Eleanor was born (pink and roly-poly, a font of gurgles and giggles, a delight to all the family) the situation slowly, subtly changed. Florence was so besotted with the baby, she did not seem to begrudge, or even notice, his very long workdays, the days he spent in Oxford. She did not know he was in Oxford. No one did.
For these ten years the London Library had served Quentin as the perfect fiction. (In turn he had served it as a respected trustee.) Twice a week he told Miss Marr, every-one, he was at the London Library, reading, and then he got on the train to Oxford. Claire met him at the station, and drove him home, Polstead Road, and later, to the house she bought on Linton Road, nearer the river.
This was where Quentin Castle lived and breathed and had his being. Mornings they had in bed, and then after school, when the children came home, they would work side by side, reading, writing. The girls warmed to him swiftly, and in time came to adore him, but from the beginning Michael Carson contested Quentin’s right to Claire’s affection. When, clearly, she wasn’t going to give him up, Michael simply stayed at school on days when he knew Quentin would be there. In good weather Quentin and Claire took the girls punting on the river or walked university parks, or went to the pub at Binsey and fed the ducks and swans. In bad weather they would go to the central market, or visit the Ashmolean. With these coltish girls, Mary and Catherine, Quentin was demonstrative and affectionate, as loving and indulgent a father as if they were his own.
Claire and Quentin spiced these ordinary days with time in London when she came to confer with Bernard, editing and publishing, promoting Frank’s posthumous work. They might go to a film or the theatre together; they might have dinner with Louisa Partridge who was a willing party to their love affair and offered an excuse for Quentin any time he needed one. In London they were circumspect in others’ company, though they prickled with anticipation, knowing they had reserved a hotel room. Once, they could not wait for the hotel and made love on the carpet in front of the fireplace in his office, after hours, the building deserted save for Mrs Rackwell’s clanging broom and buckets echoing through the airy corridors of Number 11.
It was not, however, to the office at Number 11, but rather to the London Library that Quentin went after his lunch with Enid Sherrill. The librarian at the desk nodded to him. As with The Gay Hussar, Quentin Castle was a well-known fixture here. In August, however, familiar faces were few; mostly foreign scholars peopled the tables. He saw that some unthinking foreigner had taken his favourite place. Never mind. He found a table with plenty of room, and unwrapped the parcel. Woodlands War Years. Turned the page. Yes, there it was:
Dedicated to Michael Carson
ami de mon coeur
Quentin dug about in his pocket for his stomach pills and took two, gulping them down without water. Damn them, Michael and Sybil, damn Frank, damn all of them, all to hell, not only for what this bloody book would do to the future, but for plunging his immediate plans into darkness.
Quentin and Claire were to leave tomorrow for Scotland. Ten days. A real holiday. Their first real holiday together, time untouched by any other obligations. Catherine and Mary were going with the family of school friends to Spain. Quentin’s people were at St Ives all summer. Claire and Quentin were free. He had not been to Scotland since his university days, the walking tour of the Hebrides, and Claire had never been. Her dog was kennelled, the Mini ready for the road, Claire’s new Leica fed with film, and Quentin’s new fishing rod in a handsome sheath. All in readiness. Only now, the Scottish holiday crashed and smashed like crockery breaking, glass shattering in the quiet confines of the London Library. The blue letters on the typescript seemed to blur before him: ami de mon coeur. The great Up Your Arse. And worse lay ahead in these pages. The phrase of some forgotten French poet battered at his skull like a bird trapped against a window-pane. Voleur du temps. The thief of time. ‘That’s what you are, Michael,’ he whispered, ‘the thief of time that Claire and I have together.’
Michael – who had once so fiercely defended Claire – had done his best to pry her from Quentin, inflicting pain and anguish on his mother in any way he could. As a boy he had had rages and sworn, calling her whore and slut while everyone in the Polstead Road house kept their doors shut and their ears open. Once, when he was about twelve, he struck her. Quentin would never forgive him for that. By the time Michael was thirteen – with an uncanny instinct for that powdery rot in relationships that would characterize his adult life – he learned how to inflict abuse via another. Though he disparaged and made fun of Lady Sybil Dane behind her back, he invited her to everything associated with his school life – sports days, plays – and at these events she beamed and applauded, extolled, showered praise. She overshadowed his mother entirely. Lady Sybil invited them both (and any of Michael’s friends) to tea at the Randolph Hotel following these events. Having once accepted this invitation, Claire never went again; Michael and Sybil ganged up on her, flouted their affections. In these years Sybil Dane lavished on Michael presents, clothes, and holidays, summers on the Danes’ yacht, Christmas skiing in Switzerland, Nice at Easter. On the day her son finally moved out of her home, and into Woodlands, Claire knew she had failed in the first duty a parent has: to protect her child. She had refused to struggle for her son as she had struggled for her husband. Her guilt and sorrow were unrelenting; she mourned the loss of Michael as she had mourned the loss of Frank.
Quentin could not forgive Michael for the pain he inflicted on his mother. For years fierce quarrels over Michael threatened to tear them apart: Claire weeping, Quentin resentful, knowing that however hot her anger, however deep the hurt, eventually she would excuse Michael’s cruelty – she always did – on account of his youth, or that he had lost his father, or that he didn’t know what he was doing. Quentin did not excuse him. Quentin, in fact, blamed him. Michael was the canker in the rose of their love. What had Enid said ten years ago? The boy detests you. A fundamental truth. The boy detests you. After Michael left his mother’s house and moved outright to Woodlands, Quentin took care not to express relief, gratitude that he was gone, took care not to disparage Michael. Quentin and the girls tried to put themselves between Claire and the pain Michael inflicted, and slowly, Quentin thought they were coming to some success.
And now?
He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his thin nose. A bearded reader in an elaborate rose-coloured turban sat down across from him, nodded and opened his books. Quentin unwillingly turned to the first page of Woodlands War Years, and stared at the blurry blue carbon. He could not bear to turn to the second page. This memoir would certainly be published (though not by Selwyn and Archer. Of that, Quentin was quite certain, thank you!). But someone would bring it out. Oh yes, and everyone who ever spilled a drop of sherry at a literary cocktail party, or shared a snide confidence over lunch, would be reminded of the dismal failure of Hay Days, reminded of Frank’s tawdry death in the Garden of Allah swimming pool, reminded that Claire was An Inconvenient Wife to a man she could not give up. Claire would be asked to comment. Quentin would find himself both defending and battling the ghost of Francis Carson, the ghost he thought had finally been put to rest with the posthumous September Street. The last of Frank. Thank God. But, no, next year Sybil’s bloody book would come out. Ami de mon coeur. Voleur du temps. ‘You bastard,’ he snapped, forgetting his turbanned neighbour.
Perhaps his own affair with Claire was somewhere in these pages. Neither Sybil nor Michael would have any reason to protect the lovers. Enid said the book would have to be edited for libel, but their affair was the truth. Well, what of it? There were days when Quentin himself longed to be done with the stupid fiction he had perpetrated for ten years, to smash Florence’s little snow-globe of a world. The profound guilt that had once so tormented him was but a bit of ash, the soot of emotions long since burnt up.
His life with Florence seemed like a stage set where everyone knew their lines and repeated them daily, nightly, like a long-standing, dreary play, scarcely changing even when the family moved to a fine new home, five bedrooms, and a huge garden designed by Rosamund. The housekeeping was tended to by Martha (hired after Effie was caught stealing cigarettes), the garden tended by Rosamund’s gardener, the children (Bobby born in 1952) tended by a nanny. When they were older Eleanor and Bobby went to good schools, day students so they could be at home each evening. Family life. When Eleanor and Bobby required Quentin’s attention, he was attentive, and kind, though not especially demonstrative, following in Father’s footsteps there as well; Albert had never been an especially warm parent. Florence made up for any of his lapses, cooing, and gooing, as Quentin saw it, fussing to no end. But what of it? Bobby and Eleanor flourished just like the African violets on the windowsills and the aspidistras in their pots. Florence flourished. She had a new car and a new television, new kitchen appliances every few years. Her accounts at Harrods, Fortnum’s, Liberty and other establishments were paid without question. Florence and Quentin evolved a wordless pact. Each knew what was required, and lived up to it.
In addition to his role as the proverbial Good Provider, Quentin was required to rise to certain kinds of occasions. When Florence required some physical manifestation of his affection, say once a month or so, and though they slept in twin beds, he obliged. When family occasions, like the Sunday lunches (now held at their house), demanded his smiling presence he would be present and cordial. For gala occasions, like Rosamund’s sixtieth birthday party, he would be a genial host. Florence was granted immunity from his moods (which could be bleak) and in return on those nights when he came home late, his dinner was left in the warming oven, and his absence was never remarked upon. Occasionally he would be gone on weekends for business.
Florence herself had no part and no interest in his business. As his star rose in his profession, her enquiries into his working life diminished, dwindled into the merely perfunctory. She considered his authors (except for Rosamund) raffish and unsuitable company, especially the colonials whose work he championed, and she was never asked to entertain or even to take them out to dinner. Her sole role in the Old Family Firm was the annual Christmas party. Then, like the lady of the manor, she dispensed little, specially chosen, brightly wrapped gifts to Miss Marr, the typists, the accountant, the new young agents, handed out the Christmas crackers, sliced the cake. In short – and save that her husband felt married to another woman – Florence’s life was fine and fulsome, and regulated as the tall clock in the front hall, a clock that tolled the hours.
As those hours slipping into the past became days, months, years, new planets assumed new orbits, held in place by a bland but irresistible gravity that tethered Quentin in a soggy thrall to all of them, to the children, to Albert and Margaret and Fair Rosamund, to Florence, who grew more like her mother every day with her little Rosamund-like fits of pouting. Worse, Eleanor and Bobby, like precocious baby apes, repeated her awful euphemisms, emulated her voice, her peculiar whine to achieve their childish whims. It was unseemly, painful to watch his daughter and son growing into dimpled twits, but he hid his general disapproval since no one in the family seemed to care that he disapproved. Florence reigned at home, and Quentin was more or less the junior partner, disenfranchised by choice.
Can you bear it, dear? Claire’s plaintive long-ago question rang in his heart as he stared at the blue pages before him now. He could bear it. His long-standing love for Claire permeated his heart, his very life. He sometimes smiled to think that as a young man he had not shown much promise or energy or aptitude, but in loving her, he had grown, deepened, risked much and thus become more than he could have ever imagined. He had been shaped by what he had dared to be, and whom he had dared to love. Though Quentin and Claire could not live together openly, they gave and received the plunging pleasures of satisfied lust, the nourishment of intimacy, deep emotional sustenance, unsullied trust, shared pleasures, secret places to touch, secret codes of affection, pet names; Quentin was Kanga to her Roo. Their love, which began in sexual intensity, grew into an abiding trust in one another. The marriage of true minds. When they were apart, they sustained each other with little love notes in the post, bits of juicy, lascivious teasing, or extravagant dreams and hungers, small jokes to make each other laugh. They seldom used the telephone, certainly never spoke of anything intimate on the telephone, alert always to the click if Miss Marr picked up. Can you bear it, dear?
He could bear it. He had borne it. Scotland was to be his reward: weeks ahead, free of Florence and Bobby and Eleanor, the two grandmothers, free of the stultifying obligations, the inane repetitions. Ten days to spend in Scotland to travel with Claire, to sleep side by side for ten nights. He felt in his pocket; yes, there was the small reassuring lump of the ring box, the sapphire solitaire he planned to give her, blue like Highland lakes, blue like her eyes. He had bought it over time at a Bond Street jeweller’s, going there to make payments weekly, like visiting an elderly relative. He had bought her earrings and a pendant and a watch at this jeweller’s, but this ring he considered an anniversary present. Ten years. He would slide it on her left hand, to commemorate, to celebrate all they had come through. And now that anniversary, those ten days, were to be blasted by Sybil Dane and Michael Carson. Ami de mon coeur indeed. Quentin could all but see Michael’s smug smile, his face so like his father’s.
‘Damn you,’ he said, not certain to whom he actually spoke. The turbanned man looked up, Quentin shrugged uncomfortably, and stared into the distance. He thrummed his fingers on the pages, picking up the blue from the carbon. Scotland, ruined, laid waste, ravaged. Just as surely as if Michael had been tucked in the boot of the car. As surely as if Sybil rode on the top, her peacock scarves flying out behind her. Or …
‘Or … I could …’
The man in the rose-coloured turban scowled.
Or he could take Sybil’s typescript back to the office, put it in the safe. No one need be the wiser. He would go to Scotland and say nothing. He need not let Michael steal this precious time. Go to Scotland, he assured himself. When he returned to London he would read Woodlands War Years, and then give the manuscript to Claire. In keeping it from her now, he wasn’t lying. Just a delay. And even if it were a lie, it was the first. Ten years of truth, surely that was an accomplishment. Unless, a small nagging voice reminded him, unless he were to count as lies what he had not told her. He had never let her know that he regretted being party to the fraud that was September Street. He had never let her know he felt the ghost of Frank Carson – sometimes mocking, sometimes distressed, sometimes forlorn – but certainly vivid, present on nights when he worked late and alone at Number 11. He had never let her know the depth of his anger at Michael.
Well, voleur du temps, he all but whispered now, you won’t steal this time. He smiled to touch the ring box in his pocket. He wrapped the carbon copy back in its paper, and tied the string, and left the London Library, exonerating himself of all wrongdoing in the name of love.
HUMAN ARCHITECTURE
Inevitably, when Quentin registered himself and Claire as Mr and Mrs Castle, the ruddy landlord or doughy landlady would remark with amusement that Castle was a very good name for these parts, Scotland was famous for its castles. Sometimes the landlord nodded approvingly to see Claire’s Leica III draped round her neck, remarking that some of the world’s great photographers had found their inspiration here. Claire was pleased, but she explained she was a novice, that the Leica, though a professional’s camera, was fairly new (a gift to herself with the money from September Street) and she was teaching herself to see in a new way.
As the last of the summer rolled out before them like a Scottish twilight, Claire shot roll after roll of film. They tramped the footpaths and climbed the ruins of castles, milled amid ancient standing stones, and looked across pewter-grey lochs to harsh mountains. They rented a small boat and rowed over cobalt waters where Claire snapped pictures, and Quentin, urbanite that he was, made a mess of the fishing pole, nearly losing his glasses into the bargain, and they laughed so hard they frightened all the fish anyway. They lay in the bottom of the boat and watched the clouds waltz overhead.
The August days were long and often rainy, the nights were short and sweet. Claire and Quentin drank the local whiskies, ate the local food, put their heads together and spoke of plans, possibilities, now that September Street, the last of Frank Carson’s posthumous novels, was published.
Frank’s reputation seemed settled if not altogether secure: Quentin had come to share his father’s opinion of short-lived literary regard. In these ten years Sydney Thaxton’s star had certainly fallen. But quite apart from all that, Quentin was glad to be done with Frank’s posthumous work. His own conduct with regard to September Street was perhaps unethical and certainly reckless. No one knew but Claire and himself. No one else suspected. All secrets were safe. With that book behind them, Quentin and Claire could move forward. No surprise, she said she didn’t want to be chained to a desk again, not for a long time; she wanted away from literature altogether. The Leica, photography, a pastime that had nothing to do with literature, absorbed her energies, but Quentin slowly came to understand that he had misjudged her: the Leica was a passion, not a pastime.
Driving from Fort William to Oban on a day of rare undiluted sunshine, they came to Appin, with Loch Linnhe on their right, as Castle Stalker came into breathtaking view. They gathered a blanket and the small lunch they’d brought and took their picnic to the shores of Loch Linnhe with its view of the proud, isolate tower. They peeled off rain jackets and sweaters, and rolled their shirtsleeves up, faces tilted to the sunshine, nibbled the sandwiches and biscuits, sipped the tea. Claire opened her camera bag, loaded her Leica, and snapped dozens of pictures of the tower encircled by the blue waters of Loch Linnhe. Then she turned to Quentin resting on his elbows, watching her, his long legs crossed, and took several shots of him.
She flung herself beside him on the blanket, kissed him quickly. ‘I think at this moment I can safely say, I am absolutely, perfectly happy. I can’t even imagine being happier.’
‘If you are happy, then I am content in all things.’
‘Let’s stay here, Appin, for the night, instead of going on to Oban or Glasgow,’ Claire suggested. ‘Let’s find a hotel, stay here and make this moment last even if we have to drive like hell to get back to Oxford tomorrow.’
‘We have to be in Oxford when the girls return from Spain.’
‘I’ll spell you on the driving, I promise. It’s so beautiful. Please.’
‘You convinced me. I’m putty in your hands.’
Claire let her hand wander up and over his thigh. ‘I wouldn’t describe you as putty at all.’ Her face still had its luminous beauty, though the creases at her eyes had deepened and there were tiny furrows between her brows. The bright honey-blonde hair of her youth had dimmed, darkened to amber. She kissed him, and lay back down at his side, the sun pinking their faces. ‘What are you thinking, Kanga? You’re too quiet. I know you.’
‘You’ll think I’m daft.’
‘I think that anyway.’
‘I’m thinking how nice it is that we can lie here, that you can kiss me, and it doesn’t matter who sees us.’
‘Would it matter if I jumped on top of you right now?’ Claire sat up, though she didn’t jump on top of him. She put new film in her Leica. ‘I want to capture Castle Stalker just as it is. I want to have this picture to remind me, no matter how old I get, of how happy I am, how beautiful this place is. This is the best of all the castles we’ve seen, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. They all make me a little uneasy.’
‘Why?’ She brought the camera to her eye.
‘I can’t help but think of the hands that built them, that lived here or fought here, or died here, and how the ruins remain, but there’s nothing to testify to the people.’
‘Of course there is, Kanga! The castle itself testifies to them. That’s what makes them romantic, that’s why I love them. Growing up in Idaho, there was never any sense of the people who had come before you. They didn’t leave anything at all, if there were any people, and there probably weren’t. There was only the land, the forests and mountains, all overwhelming. That landscape leaves you dwarfed and insignificant. Humans are just too paltry to make any kind of mark on a landscape like that. But castles like this one tell you people weren’t overwhelmed. They made a mark. It’s still here. This—’ She waved her arm around to the blue loch, the ancient stones of Castle Stalker ‘—was what I thought I’d find when I came to England.’
‘Instead of a vicious old granny and a lecherous uncle?’
‘Now you’re making fun of me.’
‘Never.’ He sat up and ran an affectionate hand over her hair. ‘Did I tell you that Enid thought the writing in September Street some of Frank’s best?’
‘Too bad it wasn’t Frank’s at all.’
‘That’s our secret. Besides, you were so much a part of Frank’s work that the transition is seamless.’ He leaned back on his arms.
‘All except Hay Days.’
‘Oh, that book. Who cares?’ He thought of Sybil’s wretched memoir lurking like a ghoul in the office safe. He was so glad he had left it there. These ten days had been the best of his life. He revelled in the invigorating sense of change rippling everywhere, certain as the wind rippling the waters of Loch Linnhe, a feeling he had not known since California ten years ago. Expect Great Change. But now he did not fear it. He welcomed it. He had experience, ballast, and a beautiful woman to love. He put a gentle finger to her lips. ‘Do not worry, Roo.’
‘What else did Enid say?’
‘She called it Tess of Broadstairs.’
‘That was catty. She’s jealous that you are doing so splendidly, and she is not. Why did she want to see you anyway?’
‘She plans to retire soon, and she asked me to take her authors back. I said I would, of course.’
‘That was decent of you, after the splash she made, walking out like she did.’
‘It was the least I could do. Let’s walk,’ he said, offering his hand and pulling her to her feet. He flung his arm around her shoulders and they strolled down towards the brilliant blue loch, awash in sunlight. He felt suddenly light-headed as well as light-hearted. ‘Enid Sherrill knows about us. She knew I loved you ten years ago. That night I drove her home from Woodlands.’
‘You mean after … Woodlands?’ Claire’s eyes were wide with surprise.
He nodded. ‘That very night, she asked me if I was in love with you, and I said nothing. Then the other day she asked if I loved you still, and I said yes.’
‘That was very unwise of you, Kanga. She’ll spread it everywhere. I told you she’s a jealous old cow.’
‘No, she won’t. Enid Sherrill and I understand each other at last. And anyway, I’m not ashamed of loving you.’
‘Look over there,’ said Claire, pointing into the distance, a family group, three children, shoes off, wading in the icy loch, the five adults clustered nearby at the water’s edge, the men wearing hats, the women wearing dresses, two of them holding umbrellas. ‘Only the English would use their umbrellas to protect them from sunlight on a day like today! Don’t you want to just throttle them, Kanga! It’s sunshine! Enjoy it! I want to go over there and break their umbrellas over my knee and hand them back in shards, and say, you should be tearing off your clothes instead of cowering under umbrellas! There should be a law against it!’
‘I’m sure there is. Some old ancient Scottish law declaring that you must fall to your knees, naked, at the first sign of sunshine.’
She brought the Leica to her eye and her shutter snapped time and again, a dozen or more shots. ‘One of these ought to be good.’
‘What is there to see? They’re so far away, you can’t tell anything about those people.’
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ she said, putting the lens cap back in place. ‘I’m not interested in their faces. To me they’re just shapes in the distance with the castle as background. It’s the way they’re standing, the way the women’s skirts are blowing, the tilt of the umbrellas. They’re human architecture.’ She smiled, her merry blue eyes deeper than the loch, brighter than the sky.
Quentin thought his heart might break from a surfeit of tenderness. ‘Marry me.’
‘What?’
‘Marry me. Every time I register us as Mr and Mrs Castle, I think to myself, it ought to be the truth. We should get married, Roo.’
‘I feel married to you, Kanga. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Not for me. Not any longer.’
‘Aren’t we just as married as we want to be?’
‘I’m not. This whole holiday I keep feeling the ground beneath me shifting, as though the old ways of being and doing won’t do any more. The thought of going back to the old same routines, I can’t bear it. I’ve changed. I want to change,’ Quentin insisted. ‘I want to marry you.’
‘Why?’
‘Ten years of loving you, isn’t that reason enough?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ She tucked her arm closer to his and they continued to walk along the loch’s mossy edge. ‘I just meant why now?’
‘Why not now? Let us take what we can from life while we can.’
‘You talk as though we’re dying.’
‘I’ve never felt so alive as I have these ten days, but I’m afraid that life will slip away from us, and we will have missed the things we ought to have had, if only we had the courage. I want to grow old with you, Roo. I want my dentures in the glass next to yours.’
She laughed at first, then stopped walking, and combed his well-known face with her eyes. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re not joking.’
‘I am serious. My father died last year. He was seventy-one. I’m thirty-five, you’re forty.’
‘What a brute you are to remind me how much younger you are.’
‘Not that much.’
‘Then you’re a brute to remind me that I’m forty.’
‘All I’m trying to say, my point is, half our lives might already be spent. What about the next half?’
‘Oh, you’re being morbid.’ She started walking again, away from him.
‘No, I’m not. I’m being alive.’ He reached out and took her arm. ‘I can’t bear the thought of returning to a life that’s a lie, a stale lie at that. I’ve had these ten days with you, and I want more. It’s that simple.’
‘It’s not simple. Think of the scandal.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Claire the brave! Claire the imaginative! Claire the irreverent! Claire who declared her love for a married man! That sounds like an old maid with her head in a tea cosy, like Miss Marr. Scandal? What is there to fear? No, really, Roo. Will I care that Florence’s bridge partners will no longer speak to me? That Rosamund’s gardener will think I’m a cad?’
‘I wasn’t speaking of them. A professional scandal.’
‘Do you really think authors will leave the firm because I’m divorced? Has there ever been a literary man who didn’t have a messy love life?’ They both thought of Frank, but neither said his name. ‘Louisa Partridge will be overjoyed. She’ll give me the Distinguished Cross. She’s always stirring me on to action of one sort or another.’
‘To marriage? That doesn’t sound like Louisa.’
‘Why should I live half a life when I am a whole man? With you I am a whole man.’
‘Divorce, Quentin, think on it. Divorce will make you look bad. It will reflect on, well, on your honesty.’
‘Don’t you understand? I don’t care.’
‘Your wife will care. Your mother will care. Your children will care.’
‘Florence doesn’t give a damn as long as everything stays put and in place. And it will. I’ll go on supporting them, naturally. I used to feel like a guilty adulterous shit, but now I just feel like a fraud. Living with her, and snatching bits of time with you, like a pickpocket, like a thief. A thief of time,’ he added, bristling.
‘What if your father had left Margaret for one of his affairs? How would you have felt? You would have judged him harshly.’
‘You are not one of my affairs. You are my one true love, and I am yours. My father could not be faithful to anyone. I have been faithful to you, and you to me. What can I say, Roo? Come live with me and be my love.’
‘You speak as if the world was well lost for love, like we were young. We’re not two kids in the back of a market-garden truck on our way to the rest of our lives. We’re middle-aged people and the choices we’ve already made have shaped us.’
‘But there’s more to be shaped! We can have a whole life together, not these shreds, these shards of time we’ve been satisfied with. I’m not satisfied. I want more. I want you.’
‘And what of the girls? What will we tell them?’
‘We don’t have to tell them anything! They know we love each other. I am as much of a father as they have ever had. They know I love them.’
‘What of Michael?’
‘He’s made his choices.’ He instantly regretted reminding her that her son had chosen Sybil Dane over his own mother. ‘You don’t have to answer to Michael. We’re done with Michael.’
‘I am not done with Michael. He’s my son. I can’t ever be done with him.’
‘I didn’t mean forever,’ he lied. ‘He’ll grow up and come round one day.’
‘And say he’s sorry?’
‘Absolutely,’ he replied, hating Michael all the more, hating the typescript in the office safe.
‘And ask my forgiveness?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you really think so, Kanga?’
‘Marry me, Roo. I thought this holiday would assuage all my longings, but it hasn’t. It’s made me hungrier, made me want more, desire more. Sometimes I think I’ll shrivel inside if I can’t see you, if I can’t …’
She turned and pressed against him; discreetly she let her hand fall below his belt and stroked him. ‘You will never shrivel if I can help it.’ She kissed him again, and turned back to the loch and the castle.
He flung an arm over her shoulders and they walked on. ‘I don’t fear anything except living apart from you. I’m stronger than I once was. Aren’t you? Haven’t we given each other that much? Shouldn’t we have the strength of our love?’
‘We do, love.’ She placed her left hand with its brilliant blue sapphire at his lips, and then kissed him gently. ‘I have your ring, I have your love, I have your trust, and you have mine.’
‘Then tell me you’ll marry me, and I’ll go back to London, and tell Florence it’s over.’
‘Florence is in St Ives.’
‘Fine.’
‘Quentin—’ She shook her head ‘—I told you from the beginning … really, the beginning, when you came to Polstead Road that day and said there wasn’t any hope of our ever marrying, I told you I didn’t need to marry you to love you. I loved you then, I love you still, Kanga, but I don’t want to marry anyone. I will never remarry.’
‘Am I being punished for what Frank Carson did to you?’
‘Oh, don’t sulk. I hate sulking.’
‘I’m not! I’m asking a question.’
‘Then leave Frank out of this. You always bring him up when you want to quarrel.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do.’
‘All right then. I do. Never mind him. I’ll get a divorce and we won’t get married. Will that solve it?’
‘Oh, you are impossible.’
‘Florence and the children can have everything. I’ll come live with you and commute to London. It won’t be so very different. Two days a week I work at home with you in any event. Look, I have the courage for this! Don’t you?’
‘What’s happened to you? All this fresh air has addled your brains. That, or you’re mad.’
‘Then I’ll be mad. Marry me. Do you want me to get down on one knee?’
‘Don’t be foolish. Don’t you dare!’
‘I am foolish.’
‘I thought you were brave.’
‘Aren’t they the same thing?’ Quentin insisted. ‘Really. It’s all the unbrave dullards who live without love. Like those people with umbrellas to protect them from the sunshine. We’ve been living just like them.’ He got down on one knee.
‘Please! Get up! We’re not like them in the least.’
‘But we are! That’s how we’ve lived for ten years. There’s sunshine all around us and we’ve cowered under umbrellas. Maybe we had to then, in the beginning, but not any more. Look, we have sunshine all around us. Let’s crack the umbrellas in half and step into the sunlight.’ He stood and enfolded her in his arms.
‘The sunlight won’t last. It never does.’ She gave him a noisy kiss on the lips, and turned to go back towards the picnic blanket. ‘Let’s go find a hotel.’
He followed her, his mood dampened but not destroyed. He would keep at it, erode her objections, like the wind and the rain had worn down all those old standing stones; he would convince her that now was the time for them to free themselves. And, not incidentally, he remembered with a small thump of conscience, to be able to face the slings and arrows of Sybil’s book, and Michael’s defection together, a united front, as husband and wife.
‘One last picture,’ she called out, turning towards him.
‘I’m not human architecture.’
‘Of course not. You’re my one true love. Now smile for me.’
For all the thousands, perhaps millions, of photographs Claire Carson took over a twenty-year career, few survived from early on, save for the Umbrellas of Appin, which she always deemed one of her best. It was one of twelve in her first showing at a small Oxford gallery, and among her most famous even years later when she had her much-lauded 1976 exhibit at London’s Excelsior gallery. As a photographer, however, Claire Carson had little interest in portraiture, in people or faces, so there were but a handful of family pictures among her effects – these few of Quentin in Scotland among them – when she died in a private plane crash over the eastern Mediterranean in 1979.