‘I’M GOING TO SHOW you the south front first,’ said Colin.
‘Where is it? Where is it?’ said Lindsay.
‘You can’t see it yet. Wait until we come out of the wood. You’ll see it clearly from the deer park…’ Colin hesitated. ‘That is, well, it’s not much of a park. More a sort of field, really.’
It was going to be a park; Lindsay knew that immediately. She could hear the anxiety and hope in Colin’s voice; she now knew what to expect when Colin began on qualifications and understatements. It was going to be a park, a huge park, a demesne, a place of appalling perfection. She had encountered this park in innumerable films and novels and, in her mind’s eye, she could see it already.
It had been landscaped by Capability Brown, or some similar man of genius. It would declare at a glance the mastery of his vision, his gift for disguising artifice, and his sublime use of asymmetry.
There would be oaks. She could see these oaks now, in their venerable majesty; she could see not grass but ancestral greensward, descending from the brink of the house to the brink of some lake, a lake created 200 years before (or thereabouts; she was not too sure of the exact dates here), a lake which now looked as if the hand of God had put it there.
She was sure that, on the far side of that lake, there would be some quaint temple, the vista towards which, and from which, would have been contrived with eighteenth-century grace, wit and decorum. She was afraid of this temple, this lake, these oaks and this greensward. She was afraid of any property large enough to boast a park, and she was terrified of the house at the heart of it. The reason for this fear was simple: she feared temple, lake, greensward, oaks, park, house, because they belonged to Colin.
For the past two days, she had been trying to persuade Colin to describe his house—forewarned is forearmed, she had told herself. She had tried on the long overnight flight from New York, which they had taken that Friday; she had tried in her London apartment, to which they had returned from the airport in Colin’s extraordinary car, the most powerful she had ever driven in. She had tried on the motorway down here, and when they finally arrived—not at some country inn, that plan had changed, but at Shute Farm—she had tried again.
Not at first. She had been so entranced by the farmhouse, which proved even lovelier than it had seemed in photographs, that for some time she had forgotten Shute Court altogether. Colin had somehow ensured that the farmhouse had been made ready for them; they could spend this night there, he had suggested. Some fairy had been in, Lindsay felt, forgetting the magic wand of money. This benevolent personage had lit the cooking stove, lit the fires, polished and cleaned, made up the brass bed with lavender-scented sheets, and left food and wine for them. Even the lights had been left on, so, as Colin’s great car purred and bumped its way up a rutted track, and she saw the house for the first time through the gathering dusk of a winter’s afternoon, its lighted windows seemed to welcome them.
With excitement and delight, Lindsay had rushed from room to room, while Colin pointed out to her its various architectural features. Lindsay loved its wide-boarded, uneven oak floors, which reminded her of the deck of a ship. She loved its beams and low doorways, which meant Colin had constantly to duck his head. She loved its old and twisting stairs, the soft honey stone of its lintels, and the kitchen, with its scrubbed floor, warm range, rag rugs, dresser and array of blue and white china dishes.
Such was her delight that it was some while before she noticed that Colin was becoming quieter and quieter. The more she exclaimed and praised, the unhappier he became—and Lindsay, realizing the reason for this, blushed guiltily at her own stupidity and was silenced. Colin, after all, did not want her to live here. He wanted her to live in Shute Court, and—although that issue remained unresolved between them, Lindsay not answering his proposal and Colin not pressing her—she could understand that he now felt it was a mistake to have brought her here. He had not foreseen, perhaps, the extent to which this place, small and humble no doubt by his standards, would please her.
Later that evening, still feeling an unaccountable residual anxiety for Tom, she telephoned him at his Oxford lodgings. But Tom, deep in an essay on Nietzsche, claimed he was too busy to talk, and too busy to see her for the next few days. Lindsay, who had been longing to see him, resigned herself to this; over dinner, she began on her questions about Shute again. Colin could not be persuaded to describe his house, however; he admitted it was large—well, quite large; beyond that, not one word could she prise from him.
As the hour grew later, and outside, owls called to each other, she began to suspect that Colin had further plans for that night, which he had not disclosed to her. Lindsay was drawn to that brass bed, in that blue-painted bedroom; for once, Colin showed no haste to be there. They sat in front of the wood fire, in the small beamed sitting-room, drinking a delicious wine which Colin said was a Bordeaux, and Lindsay kept calling a Burgundy. As midnight approached, Colin grew more and more tense; his face became pale and fixed and his replies increasingly distracted.
Eventually, as midnight struck, he rose to his feet, and taking her hand, pulled her upright.
‘It’s Sunday now,’ he said. ‘It’s the first Sunday in Advent. I’m going to show you Shute now. I want—I’d like you to see it by moonlight.’
Lindsay was moved by his expression and by the fact that he had evidently planned this. Had she ever doubted how much this meant to him, those doubts would have vanished now. She had never seen him more serious; she could sense his agitation and she could see his determination to conceal it.
It was cold outside; the air was fresh and still, and a light rain was falling. They put on coats and boots and scarves. Colin took her hand in his and, as before, held it inside his coat pocket. They set off down the track from the house, Colin refusing to use a flashlight. Her eyes would grow used to the darkness, he said, and Lindsay, unused to walking in the dark anywhere, and certainly unused to walking in the dark in the country, found this was so. The moon, high, round and seeming in constant motion as small clouds moved across its face, gave easily enough light. There was no colour; it was like walking through a negative. The moon silvered the track ahead of them and gave to the familiar—a hedge, a post—a fleeting, fluctuating shape she found restful. Above them, there was a myriad of stars; the only sounds were their footsteps and the calling of the owls. The air smelled of earth, of the rain and of woodsmoke. Lindsay felt tranquillity steal into her mind; the world of cities, planes, cars, appointments and people, fell away from her. Clasping Colin’s hand and looking at him with love, she felt they breathed in truth and breathed out contentment.
Then Colin, taking her hand more tightly, drew her away from the track and into a small wood. There, Lindsay’s moonlit confidence began to desert her. In part, this was because, used to cities, the wood itself unnerved her. Here, there was less light, the moon shining through the branches and illuminating the ground only in patches. The undergrowth was thick; from all sides came tiny sounds she could not identify. The rain dripped and pooled the path; there were constant rustling, scurrying noises, and she had to keep telling herself that these were caused by the harmless nocturnal activities of small animals. Rabbits, weasels, she said to herself, and then acknowledged the truth: these sounds were not causing her fears; her fear was for Colin. She was afraid, very afraid, that when she finally saw this house of his, she would betray a reaction that would hurt and disappoint him.
This is his home, she kept saying to herself; he cannot help his home. It is the place where he grew up; he loves it; it is as cruel and wrong to shun it as it would be if he had grown up in some slum tenement.
Yet this argument did not altogether convince. She must try to imagine this house, she thought, then she would be prepared, and could, if need be, feign her reaction. By then, her mind had already laid out that park, the terrible perfection of that park; now she must try to face the house itself. She knew it would not be quite large, but very large; she immediately made that adjustment to Colin’s statement. She found she could begin to see this very large house, this mansion. It was perched up, she discovered, on some eminence. It was grey, austere, grand; its architectural style was both classical and assertive. She felt this house might well resemble Mansfield Park, or perhaps that great edifice, Mr Darcy’s Pemberley. On the other hand, it might look, dear God, like Brideshead, or Thrushcross Grange, or Manderley. It would be like all of those places, she thought, in that it exacted a charge from interlopers such as herself who crossed its threshold. That charge was a male child, a son for the son, an heir for the heir; this hidden aspect of his house, Colin had not mentioned once. She wondered now, for she could feel how tense and anxious he was, whether he would ever be able to bring himself to mention it. She looked towards him; she knew he loved her; with pain, she accepted that on this subject he would remain utterly silent.
‘Through here,’ Colin said. He held out his hand to her. ‘Let me help you over the stile.’
They had reached the edge of the wood at last. The moon, veiled by some ragged scrap of cloud, was revealing nothing. Ahead of her, Lindsay thought she could glimpse something still—and something moving. She gave Colin her hand and climbed over. She stepped down onto soft grass, cropped by animals. Colin put his arm around her shoulders and turned her a little. He raised his fingers to his lips; Lindsay peered into shadows and tried to make substance of shadows. A light gust of wind washed soft rain against her face; the cloud stayed still and the moon moved, bestowing radiance.
At first, Lindsay did not see the house. She saw that there was a river, wide and swift-flowing, curving along a valley. Ahead of her, beneath the spreading branches of a tree, a group of roe deer were grazing. She could see the females, heads bent to the grass, the moonlight greying the lovely curves of their necks and flanks. A little apart, head lifted and alert, there was a stag; she just glimpsed the branching of his antlers, then he scented their presence, and with one accord, moving at speed like a single creature, the herd ran off. She listened to the soft drumming of deer hooves; following the deer’s passage with her eyes, she found she was looking at Shute.
It was not as she had expected. It was not set up upon an eminence, but lay against the side of the hill, as if it had gradually grown up from the ground over the centuries. There was, at one end of its irregular outline, an attempt at a fortification, for there was some form of tower or gatehouse there. Leading away from this was a long quiet frontage, which had a collegiate or monastic look. It had glorious ranked windows which the moon made silver and mercurial; she could see square bays; she glimpsed curved gables, gentle stone embrasures, clustering and fantastic chimney-pots; and, seeing a house built not for display, but for the quiet delights of domesticity, she gave a low cry of unfeigned pleasure.
‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Colin, I never imagined it would be this beautiful…’
Colin, who had been watching her face with the utmost intentness, gave a sigh. All the tension left his body. His heart, which he was sure had stopped beating for some while, now began to beat strongly.
‘It’s the most romantic house in England,’ he said, looking at it with love. ‘At least, so it’s been said…’
‘Who said that?’ Lindsay asked, still staring at the house. ‘They were right; it is romantic. It’s wildly romantic…’
‘I think it was William Morris,’ Colin said, ‘or it might have been Ruskin.’
One of them, Colin thought, had said something roughly similar. He hesitated; oversell, he knew, could be fatal.
‘Oh, what’s that glorious tower thing at the end, Colin?’
‘Well, it’s a gatehouse really. A tower-shaped sort of gatehouse.’
‘I love towers. I love gatehouses.’
‘That’s medieval.’ Colin was beginning to feel more encouraged. ‘It’s the only part of the original house that’s left. Various Lascelleses kept adding bits. They had this compulsion to build. Apart from the gatehouse, what you’re looking at now is mostly late Tudor and partly Jacobean.’
‘Oh,’ Lindsay gave a long sigh. ‘It was there at the time of the Armada. When Shakespeare was writing his plays. Mary, Queen of Scots was alive then. Raleigh was discovering his New World…’
‘Yes,’ said Colin, feeling this was a fairly accurate summation.
‘It has a Wars of the Roses sort of look too,’ Lindsay went on. ‘And I can just imagine crusaders riding off to fight the Saracens…from the gatehouse, that is.’
‘Definitely,’ said Colin, who by then was inclined to agree to anything.
‘I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if Henry VIII didn’t stay here, with Anne Boleyn.’ Lindsay gave a deeper sigh. ‘While he was still in love with her, of course. Some years before he chopped off her head.’
Colin hesitated then. To this, the purist in him could not consent. Anne Boleyn, executed in 1536, was, strictly speaking, unlikely to have visited a house the construction of which commenced some fifty years later. On reflection, he felt he could stretch a point.
‘More than possible,’ he said. ‘Maybe he composed Greensleeves for her here…You never know.’
‘Colin, my dates aren’t that bad. I’m teasing you.’ Lindsay turned to look at him. He saw she had tears in her eyes. ‘I’m teasing you and I’m not teasing you. And it’s lovely—so very lovely.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think it frightens me, after all. I thought it might, you see. I thought it might be, you know, grand. Regimented. Marble halls. Great staircases…’
‘I love you,’ said Colin, realizing the wisdom of showing her the house from this side and at night. He need not mention the large eighteenth-century wing, invisible from here, until the morning, he decided. William Kent’s contributions to the house, he felt, were better approached with circumspection. Lindsay would cope with Kent, he was sure, in time. After all, she was prepared to forgive his money and his ancestors. If he could ensure that his careful plans for the rest of the night, and for the following day, went as well as this, his opening move, then success might be his.
Accordingly, and with deep emotion, he kissed her. When this long kiss finally ended, and Lindsay drew back from his arms with a blind, urgent look, Colin, who felt equally urgent, but determined, caught her by the hand and began to draw her towards the house. He was having difficulties with his voice, which had dropped and kept catching.
‘I want to—show you the inside. Introduce you to my dogs. My father will have gone to bed, but I want you to meet my dogs. I have these two old dogs, and—Lindsay, quickly. Darling, this house is nearer…’
Lindsay, not inclined to argue, allowed herself to be drawn up the slope towards the walls of the house. The moon lit it and hid it. Reaching a dark porch, Colin drew her inside it and began to kiss her again. Then, suddenly remembering another aspect to his plan—a key aspect—he drew her out again into the moonlight, where, as resolved, he again proposed to her. He watched the moonlight move upon her face and brighten her eyes. Lindsay took his hand in hers and kissed it. In a halting way, beginning the sentence, breaking off, then beginning again, she said that she needed more time to consider—but so sweet and so gentle was her expression as she said this that conclusions leaped into Colin’s brain. He could see she was anxious to cause him no pain by this answer; he felt at once a soaring conviction that progress had been made. An advance on silence, he thought, drawing her towards the studded oak door deep in the porch. He must persevere; he would soon—it must surely be soon—be rewarded with acceptance.
Colin had left his father very explicit directions; as a result, his home looked as it usually did, which was untidy and idiosyncratic. As he had foreseen, Lindsay did not notice the Gainsborough portrait in the entrance hall, partly because it was badly lit—in fact, unlit—and partly because she was distracted by the room’s very noticeable oddities. These included a line of walking boots, stout shoes and gumboots sufficient in number to have shod the feet of a small army; a mountain of binoculars, field glasses and small telescopes; a baby owl, one eye open and one shut, perched on the back of a chair by the fireplace, and, in a cardboard box lined with newspaper, a small hedgehog, which smelled pungently.
‘My father has a bit of a thing about wildlife,’ said Colin, looking at her with hope. ‘When he’s not watching birds, which he does most of the time, he’s rescuing things. Like that hedgehog. The gardener—someone found him the other day. He should be hibernating. Daddy’s been making him a new hibernating nest; he goes back in it tomorrow.’
Lindsay was undone. Afterwards, she was never sure whether to blame the hedgehog, or Colin’s use of the word ‘Daddy’, which had slipped past his guard and caused him to blush crimson. Hiding her face, she bent over the hedgehog box. The hedgehog, not fully grown, was curled up in a ball, and was slowly beginning to bristle. Lindsay, who knew herself to be a sentimentalist, with a weakness for all animals, particularly small ones, looked at the beauty of its spines. They were darker at the tip, paler at the base. Touching them with one finger, she found they felt soft and vulnerable, except at the tip. If Colin does not say anything about fleas, she thought—most people, in her experience, could not mention hedgehogs without mentioning fleas in the next breath—it will be a sign: I shall know I am right about Colin.
Colin, watching her with a tender expression, said nothing about fleas. Lindsay waited. Minutes ticked. He still said nothing about fleas. The hedgehog, having decided the possible threat had retreated, lowered its spines and uncurled; Lindsay saw its sharply pointed snout, its black nostrils. It made a snuffling noise, retreated the snout and went back to sleep. Lindsay acknowledged the truth; not that she loved Colin, she had known that for some while, but that she loved him in the right way—that being, as she felt any woman would know, a nice but vital distinction.
Now there was nothing to do but hope, she thought, straightening. She looked at Colin across the entrance hall. She was aware, dimly, that it was paved with a chequer-board of worn black and white flagstones. She vaguely perceived that it contained furniture and paintings, that there was an owl on the back of a chair, and that two rough-haired dogs, stretching, a little arthritic, had now appeared, and were greeting their master.
She watched them lick his hands; their tails thumped; they gave small yelps and barks of canine pleasure. She could not even see these dogs clearly, she realized; the rest of the room blurred as she looked towards Colin. He was bending down to his dogs, his hair falling forward across his face, his hand extended. He was wearing an old tweed overcoat, which was muddy. She had a muddled sense that he was good—she knew him to be good—that he was strong, and that he was deserving. Straightening up from his dogs, he met her gaze, his face becoming serious and quiet as he read her expression. With love, her eyes rested on his hair and the beauty of its coloration; they rested on his blue unwavering gaze, and it seemed to her extraordinary that she could once have been blind to this face’s distinctions.
She might have liked, perhaps, to accept him as a husband then, but since she could not, she went across to him, greeted his dogs, then took his hand and went upstairs with him to his bedroom.
Colin was careful to take a route to this room which led away from the larger and grander rooms here; the Great Hall, he felt, with its bristling displays of ancient weaponry, and the Long Gallery, flanked with too many portraits of too many ancestors, a surfeit of ancestors, could safely wait until the morning. So he took her up to his rooms by a winding back stair, pointing out to her only those small things he felt would please her—the old pane of glass on which, in 1672, a lover had scratched with a diamond the initials of his mistress; the bed-curtains in his room, which had been embroidered and stitched with consummate skill by some latter-day Lascelles wife who had had the patience of a Penelope.
Lindsay, entering his bedroom and admiring the bedcurtains en passant—she herself hated to sew—saw that the room was at the very top of the house and was open to the roof, with the rafters exposed and the great structure of its beams and king-posts visible. This delighted her. Colin, thankful that his windows faced south, thus giving no view of the more dangerous classical wing of his home, told her that when she woke in the morning, she would look out at the river.
Lindsay, who had not taken her contraceptive pills for two nights, not since that walk back through the snow from the Conrad, was pleased by this. She had no intention of taking those powerful chemicals again and, feeling that she was giving herself up to the equally powerful forces of nature, she liked the idea that the first thing she would see from these windows was the flow and currents of water.
She was aware that this strategy—like most of her strategies—was unreliable and could not be continued indefinitely. If she conceived, well and good; she would then be in no doubt as to her next action. If she did not conceive, and Gini’s predictions proved true, then she would have to find a way to leave Colin. So she would have to determine a time limit, she thought, as Colin drew her down beside him on the bed. Six months? A year? No, a year was too long, she thought; a year with Colin and she was afraid she would never have the will-power to disengage from him. Six months then, she thought, as Colin kissed her. Perhaps seven, she thought a minute later. Here, of course, was the right and perfect place to conceive his child, she thought a minute after that, though, in truth, this idea had first occurred to her somewhat earlier.
Moving against him, she began to say and do some of the marvellous things that Colin, alone in Emily’s apartment all those weeks before, had hoped for and imagined. And Lindsay, who had always believed in those forces to which Jippy, in New York, had addressed his prayers and his spell, conjured them in her mind now, as, after delays sweet to both of them, Colin came into her body.
The following day was bright, cold and clear. Lindsay was introduced to Colin’s father, whom she found brusque, possibly kindly, and certainly intimidating. With Colin, she attended church—in her case for the first time in many years—where, to a congregation of eight, in freezing conditions, a sermon was preached on the subject and significance of Advent, and Colin’s father, moustache bristling, read the lesson with considerable bravura.
After Sunday lunch was completed, father and son exchanged a glance which Lindsay failed to notice. Colin announced, in a somewhat mysterious, evasive way, that he had one or two people he ought to see. Lindsay was never sure how the two men contrived this, but five minutes later, she was sitting talking to his father, and trying to think of some possible subject of conversation with this brisk, alarming, soldierly man, while Colin, unbeknownst to Lindsay, was steering his fast and exquisitely engineered car in the direction of Oxford.
As he drove, at speed, with skill, Colin rehearsed sentences. These sentences proved less easy to handle than his demanding car; he was getting sentence wheel-spin, drift and skid; the results were unfortunate. ‘Tom,’ he muttered, ‘it is your mother whom I wish to marry. Tom, your mother and I…’ No good, no good, Colin thought. Try again; concentrate. ‘Tom, for some time now, it has been my hope to…’
No good either, Colin thought, becoming desperate. Why had this appalling pomposity descended on him? He was starting to sound like some ghastly suitor in a nineteenth-century novel. Loosen up, he thought; be cool and relaxed, modern and casual. ‘Hi, Tom, how’s things? Just thought I’d let you know. I’ve asked Lindsay to…Lindsay and I are…’ Asked Lindsay to what? Colin was now sweating. He could not think of any appropriately cool, relaxed modern usage. Shack up with me? Get hitched? Tie the knot? Get spliced? Worse and worse, Colin thought; either he sounded like an ageing hippie or like Bertie Wooster.
Start again, he thought, zipping around the Headington roundabout. Keep it simple. ‘Tom, I want to marry your mother. Tom, I have asked Lindsay to marry me. Tom, I am deeply in love with your mother, otherwise known as Lindsay, and I want to marry her. I want you to give us your blessing, and tell me what in hell I can do to get her to accept me.’
This was an improvement, Colin thought. At least it was honest. He could refine this, bang it about a bit, get it into some sort of shape. ‘Tom, I am very deeply in love…’ Very, very deeply in love? Fathoms deep in love?
Get a hold of yourself, Colin thought, swerving violently. He realized that he was now in Tom’s street, and his nerve had entirely failed him. He slowed to a crawl. The words jammed in his brain. He began to see that this expedition was the most foolish of mistakes. It was an error of judgement of colossal proportions. On the last occasion he had seen Tom, the only occasion he had seen Tom, he had been drunk…face facts, paralytic. Tom was unlikely to have forgotten this. Supposing Tom turned around and said he had never heard a worse, a more fatuous suggestion in his life? What was he supposed to do then? Ignore Tom, or just crawl away and die somewhere?
He stopped the car outside Tom’s house, but did not turn off the engine; he sat there for some minutes in a state of indecision and panic. He told himself this meeting was better postponed. Tom, according to the telephone call with Lindsay the previous night, was working flat out on an essay on the philosophical background to Fascism. He was toiling through Also Sprach Zarathustra and tackling Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch. For this reason, Tom had put off Lindsay’s suggestion of meeting. Übermensch? This essay now seemed to Colin a most excellent reason for driving away again. He was just about to release the brake, engage the gears and go, when he had the sensation—the very odd sensation—that someone had just tapped him on the shoulder.
So precise was this sensation that he actually glanced around. There was, of course, no-one behind him. He hesitated. The someone who had tapped his shoulder was now drawing his hand towards the ignition keys. Colin turned the engine off. The invisible someone, he found, was now urging him to get out of the car. Realizing that this invisible person must be his conscience, telling him not to plan something, then funk it, Colin did get out of the car. He found himself encouraged up the path; in an encouraging way, just as he was about to ring Tom’s doorbell, the door was opened for him. A young woman—it was Cressida-from-upstairs—paused in the doorway.
On learning that this tall, anxious-looking, handsome man wanted to see Tom, she let him in, started to leave herself, then paused.
‘The thing is…’ She gave a frown. ‘He’s in a bit of a state. Did you know? Are you a friend of his?’
‘I’m a friend of his mother’s. A state?’ Colin also frowned. ‘That’s odd. She spoke to him last night—she said he sounded fine then…’
‘Well, I guess he would—to his mother. You know how it is.’ She made a face. ‘He doesn’t want people to know, but he and Katya had this horrible fight—last Thursday, when he got back from Edinburgh. In fact, they’ve split up, and Tom’s pretty miserable. I’m worried about him. I tried to talk to him last night, but he wouldn’t say a word. I tried this morning, but he wouldn’t even open his door. So, like, take it easy with him…’
She went out, closing the door behind her. Colin saw that now was not the moment to start discussing Lindsay and proposals. The best thing to do, he decided, was to go back to Shute, collect Lindsay, and bring her over here. He turned towards the front door, and again felt that discernible tug from that invisible hand. The hand seemed to propel him to the stairs. After more hesitation, Colin went up them.
He paused on Tom’s landing. He could hear music coming from rooms on the upper floors; he thought he recognized a Mozart opera, just discernible beneath the heavy beat of some rock group. Then he realized that from beyond Tom’s door came the sound of a man crying.
‘Tom?’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Tom? Are you in there?’
There was no reply. Colin felt a mounting concern. He knocked on the door. ‘Tom, I know you’re in there,’ he said. ‘It’s Colin Lascelles. I need to see you urgently…’ He tried the door, which was locked. ‘Tom, could you open this door, please?’
There was silence, then the sound of a chair moving. ‘Go away,’ Tom said indistinctly. ‘Just go away, OK?’
Colin hesitated. He thought he ought to go away; he also thought he ought to stay. The more he thought about it, the more important it seemed to remain and get into the room. Tom, virtually fatherless, had struck him as volatile when he met him; he thought of how he himself had been at Tom’s age, in the wake of his brother’s death. He thought of how he, at this age, had swung wildly from one extreme to another, and how, on bright mornings like this one, he had got up, looked at the day, and started drinking.
He knocked on the door again. ‘Tom, I’m not leaving. I must talk to you. Now open this door…’
‘Fuck off.’ There was a painful sound. ‘Just fuck off and leave me alone…’
Colin considered. Three days ago, had this happened, he would either have left to fetch Lindsay, or gone in search of a landlady and a key, or made foolish threats about breaking down the door. He had been shown, however, that there were quicker approaches—and speed mattered; he could now sense urgency.
Blushing scarlet, he said, ‘Tom, there’s been an accident. Now open this door at once.’
There was a brief silence, then footsteps, then the sound of a key turning. Colin took one quick look at Tom’s face and pushed past him before he could shut the door. He glanced around the room, which was in a state of chaos. The cerise sofa was without its Indian throw, which was crumpled in a corner. The bed in the alcove was unmade. There were papers and books all over the floor—and there was something else, something that caught his eye as he turned back to Tom, but he was too distressed by Tom’s appearance to take in its significance.
Tom might be his own height, but he now looked like a boy rather than a man, Colin thought. He was unshaven; his eyes were swollen, and his face was white and tear-stained. He was looking at Colin with an expression of fear and bewilderment.
‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Is Mum all right? I only spoke to her last night…Oh, Christ.’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Colin replied quickly, ‘there was no accident. I couldn’t think of any other way to get you to open the door, and—’
He broke off, seeing a furtive ashamed look cross Tom’s face. Slowly, he turned and re-examined those objects on the table that had caught his eye. There was no mistaking their purpose. He turned back sharply to Tom and the boy’s face crumpled. He gave Colin a blind, miserable look and drew in an unsteady breath.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I wanted to, but I couldn’t even fucking well do that.’ He began to cry again.
‘Katya said I was useless—and she’s right. I bought the fucking drink and the fucking pills, and then I couldn’t do it. I’ve sat here for three hours looking at them—and I couldn’t take them…’ He pushed past Colin, fumbled for a chair and sat down on it. ‘You know where she’s gone? She’s taken the train to London. She’s gone to see fucking Rowland McGuire. She thinks she’s in love with him…’
Quietly, Colin moved across to the table. On it was a notebook with some pencilled message and numerous crossings-out. ‘Dear Mum,’ Colin read. He passed his hand across his face. Next to the notebook was a full bottle of vodka, and laid out in rows, very neatly, was a large number of white pills. The boxes they had been taken from were stacked neatly to one side.
Colin was very afraid; he looked at the pills, then at Tom.
‘This is paracetamol,’ he said. ‘Paracetamol, not aspirin. Have you taken any?’
‘No. I told you—’
‘You’re sure? Look at me, Tom. If you’ve taken any, I have to know—’
‘I haven’t. Not one.’ Tom gave him a frightened look. ‘Count them if you like. They’re all there…’
Colin counted them; they were all there. He found he was not only afraid, but very angry.
‘Do you know what happens to people who take a paracetamol overdose?’ he said. ‘They die. It doesn’t work, using a stomach-pump on them, as it can do with aspirin. It’s irrevocable. Paracetamol causes irrevocable liver damage. You could kill yourself with a quarter of that dosage, but you wouldn’t die now; you’d die in a week’s time. Did you know that?’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Did you think of your mother? Tom, how could you do this? Did you think what it would do to her?’
‘Look, I didn’t take them. I didn’t take any…’
‘You thought about it. You sat here and you wrote a note. ‘Dear Mum.’ How could you? How? You’re her only child. She loves you so much…’ He looked around the room. ‘Where’s the phone? I’m calling your mother right now…’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Tom sprang to his feet. ‘Please, don’t do that. I don’t want her to know…’
‘Too bad. You should have thought of that before. I’m not hiding this from her.’
‘Please—please.’ Tom caught at his arm. ‘Don’t do that. Let me explain—I wouldn’t have done it. Really. I just—I couldn’t think. I’ve been walking round Oxford for two days, trying to think, and I couldn’t. Nothing made sense. It was just all this fucking awful horrible mess. Katya said all these horrible things—and I couldn’t believe she’d said them. I kept thinking, it’s all a dream. I’m going to wake up in a minute. And this morning—I went round to her college this morning. She told me to get lost. She had this mad look on her face. She went on and on about him, Rowland this, Rowland that—I could kill him. She’s been writing to him. I know he’s been writing back…and I thought, I’ll show her…’
He rubbed at his eyes and began to cry again. ‘I kept thinking she’d come in, and see all that stuff—and then she’d see how much I loved her. Only she didn’t come, and I’d locked the door anyway. Oh shit…’
Colin hesitated; it seemed to him that he ought to call Lindsay, and at once. But he could feel it again, that small odd tug at his sleeve. With a sigh, he did what it seemed most natural and useful to do: he put his arms around a boy he scarcely knew, as if he had known him all his life. Gently, he steered him to the sofa and sat down next to him. He looked anxiously at Tom.
‘You give me your word you didn’t touch any pills? There aren’t any other boxes hidden away?’
‘None. I swear. It was just an idea; a gesture. That’s all I’m capable of—fucking gestures…’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Colin replied in a quiet way. ‘Not taking that amount of paracetamol shows remarkable good sense. Now why don’t you tell me what’s happened? Go back to the beginning, and when you’ve finished, I’ll call Rowland.’ He paused. ‘I know you need have no worries on that score, Tom. Whatever mad idea Katya may have got into her head, Rowland won’t have encouraged her…’
‘You’re sure?’
Colin was not sure. True, he could not imagine Rowland leading Katya on, but if she had actually gone to see him, if she turned up on his doorstep? Katya was young; she was noticeably attractive. Thinking of Rowland’s past, he felt doubts, and knew it was vital to conceal them. ‘Has she gone to his house, Tom?’
‘That’s what she said she was going to do. Oh, Christ. She’ll be there now. You don’t know Katya—you don’t know what she’s like. She reads all these fucking books. She thinks she’s in a book half the time…’
‘I’m sure Rowland will cope with that. I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll give her one of his ticking-offs—and they’re not pleasant, I can tell you. Then he’ll put her on a train and send her packing, which will almost certainly bring her to her senses…’
‘It won’t make her love me again though, will it?’ Tom bent his head. He wiped the back of his hand angrily across his eyes. ‘She doesn’t fucking care any more. She said…’
He glanced towards the bed and began crying again. Colin put his arm around Tom’s shoulders. He produced one of his Thalia-scorned handkerchiefs and handed it across.
‘Start at the beginning,’ he said, ‘and remember, people don’t always mean what they say in these circumstances.’
‘They don’t?’
‘I certainly hope not,’ Colin replied. ‘Considering some of the things that have been said to me in the past. Now, how did this begin, Tom?’
‘When I got back from Edinburgh, she just went mad—totally mad. She’d written this mad note…’ He blew his nose. Looking at Colin fiercely, he drew in a steadying breath.
‘I’ll never love anyone else, you know,’ he said. ‘Never.’
Colin was careful not to disagree. ‘Of course that’s how you feel,’ he said. ‘Now, you talk and I’ll just sit here and listen. And then we’ll find a way to sort this out, I promise you.’
‘Rowland, I love you,’ Katya said. She cleared her throat. ‘I want you to be very clear about this. Of course, I still love Tom. In many ways, I shall always love Tom, but I love Tom in this quiet, peaceful, everyday sort of way, whereas, with you…’
Katya paused. She had been rehearsing this difficult speech the whole way to London on the train. Now she was actually here, in Rowland McGuire’s strange, spartan house, it seemed more difficult to say. She had hoped that, by this point in her speech, Rowland might have done something.
He had done and said nothing. She had been admitted into the house with considerable reluctance, and only after she had burst into tears on the front step. She had been shown up to this cold, unwelcoming room with these photographs of ugly mountains. She had been in it less than five minutes before she realized that unless she embarked on her speech, she was going to find herself out on the pavement again. Rowland was now leaning up against the mantelpiece, his arms folded; his green eyes rested on her face in a manner that was not encouraging. Katya flushed.
‘With you,’ she continued, ‘it’s different. It came to me very suddenly. It was that day I met you in Oxford. It was something Miriam Stark said. Learn to read, she said. So, after you left, I started reading this novel.’ She paused again, half hoping Rowland would ask her which novel; he did not.
‘I found I could read it—and I could also read myself. And you. I know what you need, Rowland. I know what you want.’
‘Really? You have the advantage of me there.’
‘I want to go to bed with you, Rowland.’ Katya’s colour deepened. ‘You may not realize that you want to go to bed with me yet, but you will. I want you to understand…’ She paused, trying to recall her script. ‘I know it won’t be permanent; it will just be an affair. And when it’s over, I’ll go away quietly; I won’t pester you, or anything like that. I know that in your case it will be just—you know—sex, but from my point of view, it’s something I need—at this moment in my life.’
Katya paused again. Rowland, she felt, must surely now speak. There was a second part to her speech, much concerned with the nature of love, its dynamics and Katya’s theories on these dynamics—which were numerous. There was a coda to this speech that dealt with such questions as twin souls, fate, sudden attraction, and the consequences thereof: looking at Rowland’s green eyes, Katya decided to skip this section. While it had made great sense on the train to tell Rowland that she had realized he was the love of her life, it now did not.
She looked more closely at the expression in those eyes, which might have been lazily amused.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ she said. ‘This isn’t funny. It’s not easy, you know, doing this.’
‘I agree it’s not funny, and I’m certainly not laughing at you. Have you finished? I did say I’d hear you out.’
‘Look.’ Katya struggled. ‘Look—I know you’re a lot older than I am. I know you won’t be used to this kind of thing, but I think a woman should say what she feels. What’s the point of going through life covering everything up? I love you. I came up today to tell you that. If you like, we can go to bed now, and then I’ll go back to Oxford. You’ll never hear from me again. I’ve got a day return ticket, just in case.’
Rowland gave a sigh. He wondered if Katya could possibly imagine the number of times this had happened to him before. The women were different; the words were different; the intention was the same. This, of course, was the very last thing to mention.
He looked at Katya. She was wearing the workman’s donkey jacket again, a man’s shirt, jeans and a pair of Doc Marten boots. He found himself both moved and amused by this. He was moved and amused by the combination of posturing and sincerity in her expression and voice. She was now examining him closely with her large, blue, short-sighted eyes. Her hair, which was beautiful, the colour of a fox, was loose on her shoulders. She had freckles on her nose and cheekbones; her hands, he saw, were unsteady. He could see that what she said she both meant and did not mean.
He glanced away towards the windows. It was mid-afternoon, and the light was already beginning to fade. Three nights ago, he had been at the Conrad; he had spent most of the following day, the Friday, on a plane, and the whole of the following day, yesterday, seeing his newspaper to press. He felt as if he had not slept in a month, and he had realized, shortly before Katya’s unannounced arrival, that, without doubt, a Sunday was the cruellest day of the week. Most people spent Sundays with their families. In the past, he had often spent this day, or part of it, with Lindsay. Such meetings would now cease. This prospect pained him; he found himself at a loss. In a familiar city, in his own home, he felt as if he were distanced and disoriented; whatever planet this was, its atmosphere was alien.
On this planet, it seemed, anything could happen at any moment; its rules were arbitrary. Temptation could turn up at three in the afternoon, in the shape of a girl wearing Doc Marten boots, a girl with a return ticket and a wish to seduce him. This apparition, he found, made him feel very tired. He had the sensation that, if he turned away, then looked back, Katya would vanish in a twinkling. He looked back; she had not vanished; speech was necessary.
‘Katya, I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I’m touched by what you say, and flattered, obviously, but you must know—it’s out of the question…’
‘Why?’ Katya became pale. Before Rowland could answer, she undid the man’s shirt she was wearing and began crying. She hesitated, then parted the shirt to reveal a black, lacy, seductive brassiere.
‘You won’t look at me,’ she cried, tears welling. ‘You never do. Well, I’m going to make you look at me, Rowland. Oh, God, I’m so bloody miserable. I can’t work. I can’t think. Tom said I looked mad. I feel mad. I might as well go and jump in the Thames. I nearly did, this afternoon. I went and stared at the Thames for hours, but I couldn’t find the right place to jump, and it was low tide and there was all this mud…’
She made a wailing sound; large tears fell down her face. Rowland found that somehow—he was never sure how it happened—he had put an arm around her. The next thing he knew, Katya’s tears were being wept against his shoulder.
‘I want to die,’ she said, indistinctly. ‘I could die of shame. You don’t fancy me, do you? I’m fat. I’m undesirable. I’ve made an idiot of myself. Oh, this is horrible. Why did I come here? Why was I so horrible to Tom? I threw all these books around. We stayed up all night, arguing and arguing, and I drank all this wine and said these horrible, cruel things…Rowland, I could feel this storm—there wasn’t a storm, but I could hear thunder. I kept seeing these flashes of lightning…’
Rowland made a sympathetic noise. In an awkward way, he patted, then stroked, her back. He found himself in a quandary. He was in no doubt as to how he should now behave: he should calm Katya down, talk to her in a kind, fatherly way, and, with the utmost firmness and tact, get her out of his house and back to Oxford. This course of action was totally clear to him; however, on this planet he was presently visiting, other factors seemed to be influencing him. He was finding himself distracted by the warmth and proximity of Katya’s body, by her tears, and—not least—by her breasts. He couldn’t quite forget that glimpse of the black, lacy brassiere. Katya was neither fat, nor undesirable; the bared skin of her chest had proved to be pale, beautiful and dusted with freckles. She had a slim waist, a strong young back, and her skin had a faint, pleasant nostalgic scent to it, which Rowland thought might come from talcum powder.
Despite her words, she had contrived to put her arms around his neck, and her breasts were pressing against his chest. It was some while since Rowland had slept with a woman; the misery of the day was acute, and he was, he thought, only human. Katya had truly beautiful hair, he realized, laying his hand against it, hesitating, then beginning to stroke it.
He was just about to tilt Katya’s face up to his when he had the sensation—the very odd sensation—that someone had just tugged his sleeve. So strong was this sensation that he looked down; but no, as he had known they were, Katya’s arms were clasped about his neck. There was, of course, no-one else in the room and no-one standing next to him.
He found he was now looking down at Katya. She had stopped wailing and crying as suddenly as she had begun, and was now regarding him in an alert, desperate way. Her eyes were lovely, Rowland thought; her mouth was lovely.
‘I wish you’d kiss me, Rowland,’ she said. ‘Just a very brief kiss. Just once…’
It seemed to Rowland that, indeed, one brief kiss could do no harm. He hesitated. The telephone began ringing. On its third ring, understanding that he had been rescued, Rowland gently released Katya, told her to do up her blouse, crossed the room and answered this timely call. The caller proved to be Colin Lascelles. He did not mention alcohol or pills, but he explained where he was; he spoke for some time and he spoke with emphasis.
‘Quite,’ Rowland said, several times. He glanced across at Katya, who was buttoning up her shirt. ‘No. She got here about half an hour ago, Colin. We’re just leaving now. I agree. Yes, she is rather upset. I’ll drive her back to Oxford. I think that would be best.’
Rowland replaced the receiver. He looked at himself and disliked what he saw. ‘That was Colin,’ he said, ‘calling from Tom’s room.’
Katya blushed scarlet again. There was a silence. Katya, who as Rowland well knew, was by no means unintelligent, gave him a look which gradually became considering.
‘I do love Tom, you know.’
‘Then learn to behave accordingly.’
Katya’s colour deepened. ‘OK, OK. I deserved that. I’ll go. You don’t have to drive me.’
‘No, I will. I don’t want any detours to the Thames.’
‘I’m not really the suicidal type.’ She paused. ‘One question—how close, Rowland?’
‘Too close for comfort.’
‘I thought so.’ Katya’s face lit up in a brilliant smile. ‘Well, that’s some consolation.’
‘Not for me it isn’t.’
‘So what do we do now, Rowland?’
‘Now, Katya, you come downstairs, and you get in my car, and I drive you back to Oxford—which is an interruption I could well do without. While we’re on the motorway, I’ll give you a sensible fatherly talk. And you will behave yourself.’
‘All right.’ Katya frowned. ‘I did mean what I said to you, Rowland.’
‘No, Katya. I don’t think you did mean it.’
‘I shall feel awful tomorrow. I’ll want to die of embarrassment and humiliation.’
‘Don’t. I should concentrate on Tom, if I were you. That’s rather more important. Now get your coat. And Katya, be more careful which books you read in future.’
‘All right, Rowland. I’ll stick to Trollope.’ Katya gave a small smile. ‘All those clergymen. I should think that would be safe…’
‘Out. Now,’ said Rowland.
In his car, true to his word, Rowland provided sensible fatherly advice. He produced Kleenex from the glove box when Katya hit another weeping phase. He drove at exactly the speed limit for the entire route—not his usual practice—and by the time he dropped Katya off at her college, he realized he had never felt so hypocritical and so ancient.
‘Do you think I ought to go and see Tom now, Rowland?’
‘No, I don’t. I think you should give it a few days, Katya. Colin’s taking him back to his place, anyway. Lindsay’s there. Give yourselves a few days to think, and calm down a little…’
Katya gave him a sidelong glance; she departed.
Rowland drove around Oxford, feeling a curious reluctance to leave the city. He thought of how easy it was to give advice to others in such matters and how peculiarly difficult it was to act on such advice oneself. He thought of the time he had spent in this city, and of what he had done—and left undone—since he had lived here. He tried not to think of the fact that Lindsay was close by, yet out of his reach.
He drove around the one-way system six times. There were no tourists in Oxford at this time of the year; term was ending, undergraduates were departing. The darkness of a winter’s evening gave to these beautiful college buildings a sweet melancholy. It came to him that he had no reason to hurry back to London, since no-one awaited him there. About to go around the one-way system for the seventh time, he changed his mind, parked the car with surprising lack of difficulty, and began walking. He walked through Christ Church meadows, and along the river bank, and found himself alone, the river swollen by rain, and dead leaves drifting. He walked for some way, then, hearing the chapel bells begin to ring, and the church bells start to toll the hour, a long process, for as Tom had noticed, none of these clocks synchronized, he turned back.
Again he had the sensation—the very odd sensation—that he was being guided. This time, no invisible person tugged at his sleeve, but his feet seemed to know in which direction to take him. They led him back to Katya’s college. Once he was in the porters’ lodge, he found he had decided that, since he was in Oxford, it might be sensible, even prudent, to have a word concerning Katya with her tutor, Dr Miriam Stark, a cool woman of sound sense, of good judgement, whose books he had always admired; a woman he had once liked, but with whom he had lost touch all those years previously.
The porter informed him that Dr Stark did not live in college, but might be in her rooms. A call was put through to these rooms. Dr Stark, it seemed, was there working, but was prepared to see him briefly. Rowland was given directions. Wondering why Dr Stark should have elected to become a Fellow of a women’s college, when Balliol or Christ Church or Magdalen would surely have welcomed her, and wondering how to broach the difficult subject of Katya, Rowland set off across the quad, reaching her ground-floor rooms as the chapel bells stopped tolling.
Dr Stark’s room was lit by lamplight and its curtains were not drawn. From the quad outside, Rowland glimpsed her, framed by the window. She was seated at a desk, in profile to him, her face hidden by her dark hair, which fell forward as she bent over her work. The quietness of her room communicated itself to Rowland; he could see she had books piled upon her desk and a book open before her. He found himself very curious to know what she was reading.
Three days later, Lindsay’s tenancy began. Colin left to begin work in Yorkshire and Tom went with him.
‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Colin said to Lindsay for the tenth time that morning, drawing her back into the hallway of Shute Farm and kissing her. ‘Darling, I promise you—I need another assistant. It’s the vacation; he can be my runner. He’s mad about films. Work and a change of scene is just what he needs. Once he realizes there’s a world elsewhere and a universe beyond Katya, he’ll recover very quickly. I won’t let him out of my sight—and I won’t let him notice that, either. Besides, it’s been good for him here. He’s better already. He’ll never consider anything that foolish again, I’m sure of that…’
‘I don’t know that. He promised me, but I still—’
‘Trust me.’
‘Colin, I want him near me. I feel so afraid for him—’
‘I know you want him near you,’ Colin said quietly, ‘but you have to know when he wants and needs something else. Let him have the chance to prove something to himself, Lindsay. That stupid girl hurt his confidence badly.’
‘I mustn’t even fuss, you mean?’ Lindsay gave her new landlord a wry look.
‘You can fuss a bit, but don’t overdo it.’
Lindsay took this advice. Going out with Colin to his great car, which Tom was admiring, she saw her son’s face tighten with apprehension. Guiltily, Lindsay realized that she was responsible for this. Tom was now expecting one of the endless epic motherly recitals which delayed all his departures. For the first time in his life, Tom was spared them; Lindsay abjured all the talismanic sentences which she had come to believe ensured her son’s safety. She did not tell him to get enough sleep, to eat properly, avoid illness and accident, and call if there were the least problem. These, and many other imprecations, she said silently to herself; to him, she said only to take care, work hard, and enjoy himself.
This so astonished Tom that it silenced him completely. He and Colin were five miles down the road before he felt able to speak.
‘How did you do that?’ he said, looking at Colin, who, he noticed, drove fast and with great skill. ‘How on earth did you do that?’
‘I didn’t do anything. Lindsay’s getting used to the idea that you’re a man now, that’s all.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Tom, don’t be hard on her.’ Colin hesitated. ‘It’s because she had to bring you up alone. If she was anxious, well, she had no-one to share those anxieties with, so they got worse…’
‘You reckon?’
‘Oh, definitely. Anyway, all women are a bit like that. It’s a strength as well as a weakness. I promise you, Tom, my mother was exactly the same. She used to cry when she saw me off to school—I boarded when I was seven.’
‘Seven? Jesus.’
‘It’s only because she loves you. And, maybe, she hadn’t realized the effect it had on you. She…she—’ Colin struggled. ‘She has a very warm heart, Tom, and she can’t always disguise her feelings. And—’
‘And you love her, right?’ Tom grinned. ‘It’s OK, Colin. I kind of noticed.’
‘I want her to marry me. I want her to marry me desperately…’ Colin slowed. He looked towards Tom, his expression both desperate and woeful. ‘That’s why I came over to Oxford on Sunday. I wanted to—actually I’m not sure what I wanted to do. Ask your blessing…’
‘That’s cool. You’ve got it.’
‘Ask your advice.’ Colin groaned. ‘She won’t say yes, and if she doesn’t say yes soon, I’ll go mad…’
‘You want my advice?’ Tom blushed with pleasure. ‘Really? Wow!’ He gave a smile. ‘Well, with a normal woman the car alone would do it. I mean, if I was a woman and a man drove up in this, I’d say yes before he got out of it…’
‘That’s because you’re a man. Think female.’
‘OK, OK. Well, the house ought to help—but Mum’s not normal there either. She likes your Dad, I can tell, and that’s a plus factor. Hang on, I’m thinking…’ He frowned. ‘I mean, it’s weird—but then she is a bit weird. I can see she’s mad about you. Something happens to her face when she looks at you. I’ve never seen that happen before.’
‘Never? You’re sure?’
‘Well, a bit, once or twice. She was keen on Rowland for a time…’
‘I know, I know. Don’t mention him, it doesn’t improve my driving.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,’ Tom said in a negligent, dismissive tone. ‘Rowland’s all wrong for her. She knew that really. I mean, Rowland’s fine as a friend, but can you imagine living with him? If she’d actually gone to bed with him, she’d have got over that in about a week, but she didn’t. Rowland never fancied her anyway.’
‘You’re sure?’ Colin looked at Tom in astonishment. ‘More fool him.’
‘Oh, he liked her,’ Tom said in an airy way, ‘and Rowland’s getting a bit desperate—his age and still unmarried—so maybe he persuaded himself it was more than that—I did think that, once or twice. When we had that lunch in Oxford, for instance.’ He gave Colin a shrewd glance. ‘But that was partly rivalry. I mean, he could see how you felt about Mum. Everyone at the table could except her. It stuck out a mile…’
‘Did it?’ Colin asked, ‘Oh, God. God’
‘But you don’t have to worry about Rowland. She never looked at him the way she does at you. So if you really want to marry her…’
‘If? If?’ Colin overtook three cars superbly. ‘There are no “ifs” here, Tom. Advise me.’
Tom looked at Colin and considered. He now felt ten years older than when he’d got into this car. He was realizing how much he liked this somewhat eccentric man. He was wondering if this man would be eccentric enough ever to let him drive the Aston Martin. He was wondering why he had not thought of Katya for over twenty hours, and whether that could be seen as a falling-off or as progress.
Deciding that, as step-fathers went, Colin might prove an exceptionally nice one, he sighed.
‘Are you any good at chess?’ he said.
‘Not bad. Why?’
‘Mum’s appalling. I mean, so bad it’s awesome. But there’s something she does when she plays; it’s just given me an idea…’
Tom spoke rapidly, for some minutes. Colin’s eyes widened. ‘You think so? You’re sure? When?’
Tom frowned and considered again.
‘When does this movie finish? End of February? Three months from now? That’s about right. Go for March first…’
‘Three months? I can’t stand it…’
‘Festina lente,’ Tom said, surprising Colin. ‘Trust me—the first of March is perfect.’
A week later, in mid-December, Lindsay went up to London to help Pixie move into her own once much-loved apartment. This process did not take long, since Pixie’s belongings consisted of a hi-fi system, some CDs, a budgerigar and a suitcase.
‘Don’t you have anything else, Pixie?’ Lindsay said, as they deposited these in her former sitting-room. ‘What about books? Clothes? Where are all your clothes?’
‘Oxfam,’ said Pixie.
She yawned, stretched, rearranged her red hair and executed a small jig.
‘I’m beginning a new life. New apartment. New hair colour. New job. New clothes. New future.’
‘How’s the job working out?’ Lindsay said, looking around her and feeling despondent.
‘Brilliantly. Max says I’m the best fashion editor he’s ever had. Except for you, obviously.’
‘Oh, great. Terrific. Thanks a million.’
‘And this place is a big improvement on that horrible hole I had…I might repaint it. Do you mind?’
‘Feel free,’ said Lindsay.
‘You sure you want me to just rent? I’ll buy it if you like. I’m getting into mortgages. Gearing.’
‘No, you can’t bloody well buy it.’ Lindsay sat down. ‘I may need it.’
‘Is something the matter with you?’
‘Yes. I’m post-menstrual.’
‘Post?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘You’re joking.’ Pixie stared at her hard and long. ‘Tell me I’m not hearing this.’
‘I’m not joking. I was never more serious in my life. I love him. I love him desperately. I want his babies.’
Pixie opened her mouth to protest, argue and expostulate. She looked at Lindsay’s face and closed it again.
‘Plural?’ she said, being nothing if not practical.
‘If possible. One would make me so happy, but if the one was female…’
Pixie felt she wanted to scream—loudly. Since she was fond of Lindsay, she did not. She sat down beside her and took her hands.
‘Lindsay. Look at me,’ she said with great sternness. ‘Now tell me, is this for him or for you?’
‘Both.’ She gave Pixie a look of misery. ‘I can’t help it, Pixie—I’m just like that. I always was. There’s this direct line between my heart and my womb. I’m a throw-back, Pixie. I’m primitive.’
Pixie agreed with this view, but forbore to say so, since Lindsay had now begun crying.
‘Oh, Pixie, I love him so much,’ she said. ‘I love him with all my heart. He’s the most wonderful man. He’d be such a wonderful father. I know he needs an heir—but it isn’t that really…’
‘I should hope not,’ said Pixie, who disapproved of primogeniture and found this a very nineteenth-century predicament.
‘He should have children. I know he wants them, but he won’t say so—he’s afraid of hurting me. He’s afraid I’m too old—and so am I. Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?’
Pixie thought for some while.
‘Give me your dates,’ she said. ‘Right, now let’s make the calculations here…When’s he next down from Yorkshire?’
‘Tomorrow. But only for about half a day…’
‘Tomorrow’s perfect. Half a day? What’s the matter with you? You can fix this inside ten minutes.’
Pixie rose. She opened her suitcase, rummaged around inside and brought out a small white jar.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now, you rub this stuff into your skin about half an hour before, OK? It’s unbelievably expensive and it never fails. Believe me, Lindsay, this would fix it for an eighty-year-old woman…’
‘What are you doing with it?’
‘Sample,’ Pixie said briskly. ‘It came in to the Beauty Department the other day. I thought I could use it. It’s an aphrodisiac as well
‘I don’t need an aphrodisiac. That’s not the problem.’
‘Lindsay, with this cream and no pill, you conceive. Believe me.’
‘I don’t believe you. It’s so much quackery.’
‘You put this on. You also wear an amber necklace—do you have an amber necklace? No? Well, buy one on your way home and wear it. Throughout. Don’t take it off under any circumstances. Promise me now.’
‘All right. I promise.’ Lindsay smiled.
‘That’s better. Now—let’s have a drink and I’ll tell you all the gossip. You go first…’
‘I don’t have any gossip.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘I sit alone with all these books and papers and I do research. What else? I go to see Colin’s father sometimes, or he comes to see me. I like him very much. He talks in this antique way. He says, “By Jove”. Yesterday, he brought me a puppy—it’s the sweetest thing, Pixie. It has this brown fluffy fur, and these deep brown eyes. I may call it Jippy…’
Pixie smothered a yawn.
‘Tom’s much better. He’s having a wonderful time in Yorkshire. He and Colin are working an eighteen-hour day. I miss Tom. I miss Colin.’ She hesitated. ‘I live from phone call to phone call, Pixie. From letter to letter. I love him so much—I dream my life away.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘I know you won’t approve, but you’ll understand one day…’
Pixie was very determined not to do so. She was, however, not as unaffected as she might have liked to be by the expression in Lindsay’s eyes and by the way in which she spoke. She determined to change the subject quickly.
‘Well, I can do better than that…’ She poured two glasses of some terrible wine she had brought with her. She sat down on a cushion on the floor, stretched out her legs and made herself comfortable.
‘First of all,’ she began, ‘you, Lindsay, are dead—did you know that? I met some terrible crazed PR woman, Lulu something, yesterday, and—’
‘Lulu Sabatier? I don’t believe it. That bloody woman hounded me for months. I told her I was dead…You actually met her? What does she look like?’
‘Weird. Tall. Long white hair. About forty. Rabbity teeth. Australian accent—or could be New Zealand.’
‘No!’ Lindsay stared at her, recognizing the woman from that corridor at that party. ‘But I met her! She gave me some other name. Why would she do that?’
‘I tell you, she’s weird. She kept rabbitting on about how much she’d liked you, how you’d gone down to her garden, or some crap. You know why she was hounding you? She represents that gruesome actor—what’s his name? The one that looks like a recently deceased choirboy…’
‘Nic Hicks? I don’t believe this.’
‘That’s the one. She thought you might want to use him in some male fashion feature, and now she thinks I might. Can he be that desperate for exposure?’
‘Oh, yes. Without doubt.’ Lindsay frowned. She thought back to Hallowe’en, to Lulu Sabatier’s party, to that aircraft-carrier loft, and its magical garden.
‘How odd,’ she said. ‘When she’d called thirty-five times, it did cross my mind it might have been important. The party was important—I see that now.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Go on.’
‘Secondly—guess who Rowland and Max have signed up—exclusively? Pascal Lamartine, no less. Max says he’s working on some book, but next year, once that’s done, it’s off to war zones again…’ Pixie paused. ‘I thought you said he’d given all that up for good…’
‘He has. He’s agreed to work for Rowland? That’s not possible. It’s totally impossible.’
‘Wrong. It’s signed and sealed. Apparently, Rowland approached him and Max clinched it…’
‘Which war? I can’t believe this…’
‘Oh, there’s always a war,’ Pixie said airily. ‘And now for the really interesting news: Rowland McGuire himself. Knock that back, Lindsay, you’re going to need it. You may not believe this, but I hear…’
Lindsay listened for some while. A sadness crept upon her. She looked at the sofa on which she was sitting, the sofa where she and Rowland had sat talking, late at night, on their return from that lunch in Oxford. She thought of what they had both said then—and what they had not said. She could see now that it was one of many past moments when she, and also perhaps Rowland, had been haunted by a future that might have been, and to which, briefly, they were close. It was just the other side of a door, just around a corner—and now, vestigial, imprecise, perhaps imagined, it would remain there. She bent her head; she found she could hear Rowland McGuire’s voice, describing his Hebrides, or Hesperides.
‘I wish him well,’ she said quietly, when Pixie had finished. ‘I hope it’s true. And oddly enough, Pixie, I have no trouble believing it.’
‘Are you wearing a new scent? Darling, you smell wonderful,’ Colin said, burrowing beneath the bedclothes in the brass bed, in the blue bedroom at Shute Farm. He drew the blankets and the patchwork quilt over them.
‘Mmmm,’ said Lindsay. ‘It’s something Pixie gave me.’
‘I like the necklace too. I like you wearing a necklace and nothing else…Is it the necklace? Or the scent? Or absence? Something’s having a very powerful effect on me…’
‘It’s the necklace, I expect,’ Lindsay replied, in a dreamy way. ‘I bought it yesterday. It’s that lovely dark amber. It’s the colour of your hair, Colin. I wonder…’
Colin burrowed down further in the bed. With love, he kissed her thighs, and the triangle of springy hair between them, and her stomach, and her near-invisible stretch marks, and her breasts and her mouth. These stations of her body were all dear to him.
‘Ah, I can’t bear this,’ he said. ‘Darling—it’s nearly five; it will be getting light. I’ll have to leave soon.’
‘Oh, don’t go, don’t go yet. I can’t bear it either. It’s still dark. It can’t be twelve hours yet…’
‘It’s twelve and a half. Lindsay, marry me—’
‘Colin, I—Give me a little more time. I’m—it’s a very serious step…Darling, if you—oh, yes. Just like that. Oh, that feels so right. If you move just the smallest amount…Oh, that is the most miraculous thing when that happens to you. But we mustn’t; not again. You’ll be late…’
‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn,’ said Colin.
‘Happy New Year, Lindsay,’ said Rowland McGuire, climbing out of his car and walking round to its passenger door. ‘Can I say that, considering it’s nearly the end of January? We made it—just. The roads from Oxford were very icy, and that track…Did you have a good Christmas?’
He kissed Lindsay, who had ventured out to meet the car, wrapped in several sweaters, a jacket and Colin’s overcoat. Rowland stared at her. ‘You’re looking wonderful. You look—This place is obviously suiting you.’ He paused as his passenger climbed from the car. ‘Lindsay, this is Miriam. Miriam, this is Lindsay.’
The two women shook hands. It was Miriam Stark’s impression that this small woman, with her untidy hair, scarcely saw her. Her face was lit with an astonishing radiance. The cold air had made her cheeks pink; her eyes shone with an infectious happiness. Gesturing with small hands in red woollen gloves, and talking away rapidly, she led them into the farmhouse.
With an obvious pride and delight in it, she settled Miriam and Rowland by a great fire, and began to rush back and forth fetching tea things. She had made a cake, she said, in their honour—but she wasn’t very good at cakes, so this one was a little lopsided…It was some while before she paused for breath; by then, she had removed the layers of outer clothing and was standing by the fireplace, looking at them.
She was wearing flat leather boots, with a pair of claret-coloured trousers tucked into them like breeches. She was wearing a careless vivid shirt and what might have been a man’s tweed jacket. Around her throat was a dark amber necklace.
Miriam Stark, looking at her quietly, found her beautiful. She looked, Miriam thought, a little like a boy, a boy in travesty, and she reminded Miriam, who was steeped in Shakespeare, of a Viola, or a Rosalind. Every second sentence she uttered, Miriam noted, began with the name ‘Colin’. When she pronounced this name, she would colour a little and the light in her eyes would intensify. ‘Holla your name to the reverberate hills,’ thought Miriam, taking a piece of the lopsided cake, which proved excellent.
Then, as the afternoon wore on and the light outside faded, her impressions of this woman began to shift a little. She was older than she appeared, Miriam realized, and probably, given her son’s age, older than Miriam herself was. Though in this light she looked, with her short hair, impulsive manner and velveteen breeches, like some Elizabethan boy-actor, there was another quality to her joy which proclaimed the woman in her. Miriam could sense an uncertainty, a hope qualified by wistfulness, which she found moving. She wondered what might be the cause of this, and had the opportunity to continue these speculations, for she was a woman of few words herself, and in the company of strangers always said little.
She noticed that this Lindsay appeared hungry, yet ate little. She noticed that, from time to time, she rested her small hands across her stomach, just below her breasts. She was very slim and seemed unconscious of making the gesture, but to Miriam, who had once carried a child herself, the movement, half protective, half superstitious, was unmistakable.
She glanced at Rowland, wondering if he too would recognize it. He did not, she thought; he had become increasingly silent as the afternoon wore on, and seeing him avert his eyes from the radiance in Lindsay’s face, she realized suddenly that he was finding it virtually unbearable to be here. Pitying him, she rose to her feet and quietly suggested that they leave now.
‘So, did you like her? I hope you did,’ Rowland said, breaking a long silence in the car, when they were halfway between the farmhouse and Oxford.
‘Very much. She is—transparent.’ Miriam paused. ‘I envy her that.’ She paused again. ‘I think she will not write her book however.’
‘Probably not.’ Rowland kept his eyes on the road. ‘But I think she’ll abandon it without regret—in the circumstances.’
‘That cannot have been easy for you, Rowland,’ Miriam ventured, after a further pause, turning her cool gaze towards him as he drove.
‘No, but it will get easier eventually. I am still very…’ He paused at an intersection. ‘I am very fond of her, and I’m equally fond of Colin.’
‘Describe this Colin. I look forward to meeting Colin.’
‘He’s excitable. He says “Oh, God, God, God” very often. And sometimes…’ Rowland hesitated. ‘Sometimes I have the sensation that God listens—which is strange, considering I’m an atheist. Colin—well, Colin has a good heart, apparent naivety, and an instinct for the jugular. As you’d expect,’ he added, in a dry way, ‘considering his background.’
‘And will she really marry him?’ Miriam frowned. ‘That vast house? All that money? Those possessions?’ She gave an involuntary shiver. ‘She must surely fear…’
‘You saw her face. She’s afraid of nothing.’
The interruption was curt; Rowland’s tone, Miriam felt, could not disguise an emotion that might have been regret, but which she suspected came close to anguish. That tone, she found, affected her deeply. She said nothing.
They had reached the Headington roundabout and the outskirts of the city; Rowland turned into Oxford. He could sense Miriam Stark’s increase in tension before he had driven 100 yards.
‘Where shall I drop you, Miriam?’
‘At the college, please, Rowland.’
Rowland slowed the car.
‘Why won’t you let me come to your house?’ he asked, in a quiet voice. ‘Miriam, is there some reason for excluding me?’
‘I exclude all men from my house. That is my policy.’
‘That wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t the case fifteen years ago.’
‘No.’ She looked away. ‘I was younger then. Now—I write my books at home. I prefer to keep that part of my life separate. I value that purity.’
‘Very well. The college then.’
They drove on for some way in silence. Miriam Stark looked at Rowland’s dark hair and at his profile. Knowing that she was being influenced by the joy seen in another woman’s face, and knowing that she was contravening a resolve taken several weeks earlier, she said, ‘Rowland, I will come with you to an hotel, if you like…’
‘I do like.’
‘Then turn left here. We can go to the Randolph.’
‘Lindsay, I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ said Colin.
He was speaking to her on a mobile telephone, from one of the upstairs rooms of the perfect Wildfell Hall Rowland had found him. From this room, where he knew he was safe from interruption, he could see across the moorland that surrounded the house to the path that led down to the beach below. From this vantage point, he could just glimpse the further extremity of the beach; he looked at a crescent of pale sand and a still, calm sea. It had been his practice, these last months, whenever he could escape from the demands of filming, to walk on this beach and think of Lindsay. He had grown used to the hours of its tides; thinking of her, always with love, sometimes with impatience to be with her, and sometimes simply with yearning, he had found the regularity of these tides soothing. The tide was now coming in fast; the day was fine, with a scent of spring, and a sharp, late winter’s sun was shining.
‘Can you hear me, darling?’ he said.
‘I can hear you absolutely clearly, as if you were standing next to me.’
‘What date is it today, Lindsay?’
‘It’s the twenty-eighth of February, Colin.’ Her voice, Colin thought, sounded a little unsteady. ‘And it’s the last day of filming—unless Tomas Court has decided to go over…’
‘He never goes over.’
‘Then you’re a free man in about—what? Two hours? Three hours?’
‘Ten minutes,’ said Colin. ‘He says he’s going to do this in one take—and I believe him. That means I’ll be with you before dark. They’re shooting the first scene of the movie now, then I’m leaving.’
‘Why do they do that? Shoot inside out and back to front? It’s confusing…’
‘Not when you’re used to it.’ Colin drew in a deep breath. ‘Darling, I’m going to ask you something that I first asked you on the telephone in a cottage not far from here. Lindsay, tell me—and by my calculations, this is for the thirty-fourth time of asking, are you going to marry me, yes or no, because in my pocket, at this moment…’
‘Yes,’ said Lindsay.
‘I have—somewhere—ah, here it is, this special licence, which means that tomorrow, in Oxford, whether you consent or not, I’m taking you to…What did you just say?’
‘I said yes,’ said Lindsay.
Colin then became incoherent. She became incoherent. She decided to wait until he was with her before telling him that this would be, in effect, a shotgun wedding.
‘Ten weeks,’ said Lindsay, coming to the end of her confused, halting, hesitant explanation.
They were standing in the kitchen at Shute Farm, where Colin, having driven at fearless speed, but with the caution of a prospective bridegroom, had arrived half an hour earlier.
Listening to her explanation, Colin had blushed one of his agonizing blushes. His face was now white. He was hearing a tremendous rushing sound in the quiet of this room. Its power astonished him; it came to him, very slowly, that this sound indicated profound joy, a joy so overwhelmingly intense, it left him speechless. Moving towards Lindsay and taking her in his arms, he found speech did gradually return to him, so he could express, by word and by touch, the fears, hopes, desires and plans which sprang into his mind now—and that she, similarly gifted, could reply to them.
Some considerable while later, a father-to-be’s panic came upon him. He felt that Lindsay should not be standing. He felt she might need to lie down; he felt she might need to eat—or possibly not to eat. He felt perhaps she needed fruit, or milk; he certainly felt—though he kept this to himself—that Lindsay must, at the earliest opportunity, be seen by Harley Street’s most expensive, wise and infallible obstetrician. Was she sleeping? Could she rest? Did she have cravings? Colin hoped, with a fond, wild hope, that she had the most impossible of cravings—whatever she craved, he would obtain for her.
‘Oh, God, God, God,’ he said, striding up and down the kitchen, hitting his head on the beams several times, and scarcely noticing. ‘Darling, you must sit down. Put your feet up. Do you need a rug? Are you warm enough? You shouldn’t have been alone. If I’d known, if I’d even suspected, I’d never have left you. Sod the movie. Sod Tomas Court. I’d have been here. Oh, God, God. Can we still get married tomorrow? It might be too much. All that stress. Women get stressed on their wedding days. Clothes! Flowers! They worry about things like that. I told Tom. Christ! Tom! Tom has the ring. I’ll have to call him now…’
‘Tom has the ring?’ Lindsay said slowly.
‘Of course Tom has the ring. Tom’s going to be the best man. We fixed it all, weeks ago. The Ulanov Manoeuvre—you pin the queen with a bishop and a knight—he said your game always collapsed immediately. What am I going to do? The honeymoon—I’d forgotten about a honeymoon. Oh God, I’m so happy. This is a disaster. What’s my father going to think? He’ll never forgive me for this. He adores you. He’ll think I’ve behaved appallingly. Appallingly…’
‘Why don’t we go and see?’ Lindsay said, rising. ‘Why don’t we go and tell him? And yes, I can walk there, dearest Colin, and yes, I might even be strong enough to marry you tomorrow. I feel amazingly strong, and well. Pregnancy isn’t an illness, Colin.’
‘Pregnancy! Pregnancy! Oh, what a wonderful, glorious word,’ cried Colin, hitting his head on a beam again. ‘With child. My child. I love you so much. Let me get your coat, and a scarf, you’d better wear a scarf. Lindsay, I can see for a thousand miles. I can move mountains. I can perform wonders…’
‘Well, yes. So it would seem…’ Lindsay smiled.
‘I’m frightened. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m afraid.’ Colin fell to his knees and pressed his face gently against her stomach. He began to kiss her woolly skirt, the waistband of which Lindsay, with pride and excitement, had let out for the first time that morning. She rested her hands on his hair, her heart full with the love she felt for him. Then, gently, she drew him to his feet.
She allowed herself to be wrapped up like a parcel in layers and layers of unnecessary but loving protective clothing, then they set off for Shute. On the track Colin was armed with a glorious optimism; by the time they reached the wood, he felt he might not be worthy; crossing the deer park, he felt he might be, if Lindsay could help him.
Colin went into his father’s study alone to break the news to him. His expression was anxious; Lindsay waited and communed with Colin’s dogs, stroking their rough fur and their elegant muzzles.
Colin came out after some considerable time, his expression astonished. It seemed that Colin’s father, so soldierly, so old school, so imbued with a lifetime’s belief that a man under no circumstances showed emotion, had behaved in a way Colin could never have foreseen. He had said, ‘By Jove,’—his only oath—several times; several times he had remarked that he was so surprised that Colin could have knocked him down with a feather. He had begun on a few terse remarks about man’s estate and his son’s future responsibilities, frowning fiercely, his moustache bristling. Then, breaking off, he had embraced his son; much coughing, turning away and blowing of his nose had not been able to disguise the fact that he was weeping.
It was bad enough that Colin should witness this weakness; for Lindsay to witness it was unthinkable. He would be coming out to her, Colin said, in a few moments, when he had regained his composure. His parting shot to Colin had been, ‘Damn good thing you’re making an honest woman of her tomorrow. Left it a bit late by my standards. Luckily for you, she’s an honest woman already. Knew it straight off. First second I laid eyes on her.’
Colin’s father regarded this remark as a witticism of Wildean elegance. So pleased with it was he that he was to repeat it to Colin, at intervals, for some years to come. Being of the old school, it was not a witticism, needless to say, which he would have dreamed of expressing to Lindsay. To his daughter-in-law to be, he said in a gruff way that she was a good woman for taking this son of his off his hands. ‘By Jove,’ he added, coughing again, ‘thought I’d never get shot of him…’
Lindsay smiled and kissed the old man, the kiss causing him to suffer severe bronchial disturbance; he bolted from the room immediately.
Lindsay was very touched by this. A sojourn here was teaching her, she felt, the value of certain conventions.
So the wedding passed off the next day, happily, and without untoward incident, at a small registry office in Oxford. Tom remembered the ring and attended the ceremony with Cressida-from-upstairs on his arm, having discovered that Cressida, a sensible girl, had a way of making Katya forgettable. This discovery he had made with a little assistance from Colin, who had suggested one day in Yorkshire that this friend of Tom’s might like to come up to watch a day’s filming; of this assistance, Tom remained unaware, for Colin was subtle.
Colin’s father attended, and—while not disgracing himself with tears—blew his nose loudly and continuously throughout the ceremony. Pixie attended, looking formidable and smiling pityingly. Lindsay’s difficult mother arrived late, but was there, and remarked only a few times, as she clasped her headmaster husband’s arm, that she was glad to see her daughter at last following her own example. Rowland McGuire, unable to attend because of work commitments, sent excellent champagne, his love, and a telegram which, when read out by Tom, was agreed by everyone to be very dry, very witty, rather risque, but very Rowland.
Lindsay wore a whitish ensemble bought in a great rush that morning, a blue garter borrowed from Pixie, and a ring—an old ring, Colin’s father assured her—which had once belonged to Colin’s mother. It was a beautiful ring, and although Lindsay believed Colin when he said its stones were very ordinary garnets, she also knew beyond a doubt that they were rubies.
Markov telephoned at intervals throughout the day, requiring updates on everyone’s precise degree of happiness; he contrived to conceal his deep affection for Lindsay beneath remarks which, as usual, were both affected and waspish.
Mellowing slightly by the time of his final call to Shute, he announced he had decided it was time he made an honest man of Jippy. He was starting to plan a marriage ceremony somewhere suitably charming, such as Big Sur, or Las Vegas. Signing off, he informed both Colin and Lindsay that they had his lover to thank for their present state of bliss. Jippy, he added, sent them both—or, rather, sent them all—his blessings.
It was that night in New York, much affected by that day’s events in England, which he had watched from afar, that Jippy began dreaming.
These dreams, which first came to him that night, and continued for some nights afterwards, came to him when he was lying beside Markov, in a state between waking and sleeping. In these dreams, he discovered, he watched present and future with a steady tranquillity. This form of precognition had never happened to him before and he much preferred it to those flashes and flickerings which had previously constituted his clairvoyance.
In these dreams, he found, he could watch over those he loved, such as Lindsay and Colin; he could watch them and others, with engagement, yet with distance. He could feel, as he watched, pity, fear and compassion, yet he no longer wished to intervene; he no longer had that painful need to seek to spare and protect; he no longer attempted to pull the invisible strings he saw manipulating this universe. He watched and accepted these inevitabilities.
And so he saw, in these nights of dreamings, that the outcome for others was less benevolent than it had been for Lindsay and Colin. He watched the director Tomas Court complete a movie which, from start date to final cut, was almost the same length of time in gestation as a baby. Nine months, and the visions Court had seen in his mind, those ghosts, were fixed upon celluloid. Tomas Court, with whom Jippy felt a certain fellowship, moved on to his next movie. Jippy could see that ultimately his health would fail him; he could see, meanwhile, that the loving war—or warring love—with his wife was still continuing.
Jippy watched this man and this woman and their son at a ranch in Montana, near Glacier. Then, with some reluctance, he scanned away from them, moving off on his dream thermals, to look at another man, woman and son, whose future lay, clear as a lake, spread out to his view below him. He watched Pascal Lamartine meet a fate that had dogged his footsteps for many years, and which Jippy had seen plucking at his sleeve that Thanksgiving night at the Plaza.
It could only have gone one way, the dreaming Jippy felt, and he sensed that this person, who had been waiting for Lamartine so long, was someone Lamartine himself had been seeking. He might have taken many forms, this person, and he might have issued forth in the course of almost any war, in any country. It could have been Beirut, or Mozambique, or Bosnia: it proved to be a small town of little importance in Sri Lanka. The instrument was not a mine or a bomb, as it might have been, but a boy—a frightened boy, toting a scavenged rifle, who fired out of panic and confusion, as Lamartine raised his camera.
The boy, horrified to see the realities of guns for the first time, bent over the body and touched the blood with a wondering finger. He had not quite believed, until that moment, how easy it was to kill a man, and he had not foreseen that a killing could happen so very quickly. He looked at the eyes of this stranger, which were glazing, then ran away, hid, prayed to his gods and vomited. Later, astonished that this event had been so simple and that he had survived it, the boy came to boast of his feat. He added embellishments; he fictionalized it. And dreaming Jippy, sorrowing for the dead man, sorrowing for the boy, saw that this fictionalizing, like the death, was inevitable and unremarkable. Similar things happened every second of every day and, sensing their clamour, dreaming Jippy moved onwards.
He watched the consequences of this event, which he had only been able to glimpse before, and now saw through his dark glass clearly. Lamartine’s wife was graceful in her widowhood, assiduous to her son’s welfare, and assiduous in preserving her dead husband’s memory. Some years later, she married an American—a man old enough to be her father, her friends said—whom she had first encountered at her father’s funeral.
Was she happy then? Jippy did not stay to watch over her future happiness or lack of it. He moved off again on his thermals, which were swifter and more powerful than a jet plane. He could have paused in his dreamings in a thousand places; travelling on, he could feel their stories rising up at him. Sorrows drifted up like smoke as he passed, but Jippy, a kind man, wanted benevolence, so he moved on and on, pausing only when he was in its vicinity.
So it was that Jippy saw Dr Miriam Stark return home one day from her women’s college, her mind preoccupied with thoughts of Rowland. She was a woman who lived her life by rules, and one of those rules—to let no man come close to her—she was beginning to fear she had broken.
On a summer’s evening, heavy with the scent of roses, she let herself into the small house to which she had refused Rowland admittance. It was situated in that part of Oxford where a confluence of rivers and a canal create small packages of land; her house, looking out over water, filled with the sounds of water, was virtually moated. This house, quiet, scholarly, calming and familiar, she found both unchanged and changed that evening. Its rooms, as always, were orderly, but she could not look at them, as she usually did, with serenity.
She had done wrong, she felt; she had done wrong to create this cool, quiet, virginal enclave. She walked through its peaceful rooms with a sense of mounting perturbation; in her sitting-room, with its books and its French windows opening onto the garden, she found her son; he had fallen asleep on a couch. He was still wearing his tennis clothes—he had been playing tennis with friends all afternoon—and his racquet lay beside him. He had a book on his knees, and in front of him, switched off, was a television bought by Miriam and rarely watched by either of them.
This boy was fourteen, now approaching his fifteenth birthday. When awake, he had the clumsiness and awkwardness of any adolescent, but asleep, he was beautiful. Miriam stood there for some while, looking down at him. He was sprawled full-length, his long golden limbs stretched out, with the easy grace of some youth, some Adonis in a Renaissance painting. His head was tilted back, exposing the line of his throat; his face was flushed from the sun and from sleep, and his dark hair, in need of cutting, curled with a girlish grace around his neck and forehead.
He was going to be as tall as his father was; he had his father’s hair, his father’s features and his father’s extraordinary eyes; this beauty was inherited. In the past, watching it form, Miriam had regretted this and tried to make herself blind to it. She had wanted this child as her child only, and she had wanted to deny the part his father had played in his making. It was, after all, the most minimal possible—the fatherhood here came about as a result of chance, a miscalculation, a copulation neither partner had intended to take place, which, afterwards, had dismayed both of them.
The Rowland McGuire of that time was a very different man to the one she had remet recently: he had been more markedly arrogant, less scrupulous and more impatient. He was making a career for himself, as she was, and shortly after their one night together, he left to take up the first of his postings in America. She, glad he had left, glad he need not threaten her equilibrium, had continued to write her book. When, two months later, having heard nothing from Rowland McGuire in the interim, she discovered she was pregnant, she had felt a fierce angry pride rise up in her; she would have died sooner than inform him.
So she had brought up her boy alone, without male aid, and this too she took pride in. She felt scorn at the need other women seemed to have for male companionship, finance and protection. She needed none of it. This scorn, and this shrinking from the male sex, from men who conquered and colonized females with such ease and such carelessness, remained with her. She wanted a lover only occasionally, and she hated the idea of a husband.
So she did not regret her past actions; she did not for one instant believe in, or wish for, any future for herself and Rowland. Certainly not; yet still there was that sense, that perturbing sense of her own wrongdoing. Rowland McGuire now mourned his single state and mourned his childlessness; this boy, she saw, was not solely her possession.
And so, later that night, when her son was in bed and asleep, a dreaming Jippy watched her pace her room, then, with reluctance, breaking off then recommencing, begin to write a letter. Jippy watched her pen move across the paper; he watched the black ink flow. Words, words, words. It was late, very late, before she finished the letter.
Did she send it? Jippy saw her carry it as far as the front door of her house; he watched her hesitate. Then his air thermals lifted him away, to a house in London, a house overlooking a Hawksmoor church, the spire of which could be seen from its main bedroom. Rowland McGuire did not sleep, he saw; watching him, Jippy felt he might act, or he might not act. He might receive the letter, or, not receiving it, be told its contents in some other fashion, on some other occasion. In his dreamings, Jippy, who was soft-hearted and given to optimism, bestowed on this scholarly woman and this solitary man, a wish for a benign resolution. He stayed to see Rowland McGuire open his shutters to the morning and pick up the telephone—then he moved on for the last of his visitations.
High summer still and he found himself in—ah yes, a hospital. There, his Lindsay, his dear Lindsay, and his good Colin, were watching on a black and white ultrasound screen, for the small fist, the foetal shape of their unborn baby.
The ultrasound operator, a young woman used to the emotionalities of these moments, kept her eyes on the screen as she moved her magical device across Lindsay’s bared stomach. Lindsay, as she never stopped telling everyone, was very large, was hugely pregnant, was carrying about a giant of a baby. This baby, limbering up for birth, gave her permanent and acute indigestion. He or she never appeared to sleep, but was ceaselessly and exhaustingly active. He or she liked to calm down a little in the evenings, and wait for the moment when Lindsay hauled herself into bed with Colin. Then, just when they were curved together like two spoons, in a state of the most peaceful contentment, this baby would remind them of its presence. It would punch, kick, roll, somersault, perform uterine headstands. This baby was a wrestler, a boxer, a gymnast; this baby was a Judo black belt, and it was working on its foetal karate.
Both Colin and Lindsay, needless to say, were immensely proud of these feats. They would complain, and they did complain, but they did so while exchanging glances of marital and parental complicity. Both were clear that their baby was unique; no other baby in the history of the world had ever manifested such prowess, such interesting characteristics. Colin, desperate for sleep, drugged with exhaustion, could still roll over at three in the morning and, with an expression of wonderment, rest his face or his hands against his wife’s stomach, so that he could feel the miracle of these kickings and strugglings.
Now, holding Lindsay’s hand very tightly, Colin fixed his eyes on the screen. Science took him on an odyssey into the interior of the womb—and he found it was the strangest of journeys. He had expected this interior world to resemble the diagrams in the pregnancy textbooks he now consulted twenty times a day. But this world, he found, resembled none of the maps and sketches in those textbooks. What he saw resembled a canyon, a moonscape, or some deep trench under the ocean. He could see shapes that might have been rivers, rocks, or chasms, but none of these shapes was fixed; there was constant flux and movement; there were blips, as the operator, frowning, made some adjustment. Here, somewhere, floating in that mysterious amniotic sac, was their child, their fully formed child, whose small heartbeats he could feel at night when he touched Lindsay.
He found tears had come to his eyes, for what he was seeing was so ordinary and so miraculous. Ah, dear God, let this child be well, he thought; let this child be whole and unharmed and born safely. Let Lindsay and me know how best to care for, console, guide and protect it from now onwards.
The screen gave one of its blips; the landscape, or seascape, reformed. His wife gave a low cry, and the operator a nod of satisfaction. Colin saw his child. He could see the curve of his spine, the outline of his skull, and a tiny clenched hand; this child flexed its fingers.
‘Goodness me,’ said the operator. ‘I think—just one second…’
Colin’s heart stopped; Lindsay’s face drained of colour.
‘No, no, don’t worry,’ said the woman. ‘Everything’s fine; everything’s normal. It’s just that I thought…one moment.’ She gave a bright professional smile. ‘Have to adjust. This is a bit tricky…Ah yes. There. The cunning little…’ She blushed. ‘Sorry. Congratulations. There are two of them.’
‘Two?’ said Lindsay.
‘Twins?’ she and Colin said in unison.
‘Absolutely. No doubt about it. Look…’ She pointed. ‘There’s one, and there’s the other. Shall I tell you the sex?’
‘No,’ said Lindsay.
‘Yes,’ said Colin.
‘You’re right. Yes, yes, yes, tell us.’
‘A boy. And—wait a second…A girl.’
‘Oh, God, God, God. Darling, you’re so clever…’
‘I don’t believe it. I told that doctor. I knew I couldn’t be this big with just one in there. Oh, Colin…’
‘The girl’s the smaller—as is usually the way,’ the operator continued, frowning at the screen. ‘She has a powerful kick though—look at that. And she’s been hiding herself away behind her brother. They do that sometimes. Well now, Mrs Lascelles, are we excited? Isn’t that a lovely surprise? I—Mrs Lascelles, is your husband all right? He looks rather pale…’
Colin heard these words from a great distance. They were small fuzzy words, receding from him fast. The room, beginning to tilt, was not recognizing the usual rules of the universe. Intent on not disgracing himself, he sat down on a small hard chair, and stared at the wall. He was a father now—no more tears, he told himself, and certainly no faintings.
He looked at the joy in the room. He could sense a cluster, a preponderance of angels. He wanted to embrace Lindsay and the operator who had been the harbinger here. He wanted to cry aloud, to voice some great, thankful cry of hope, promise and jubilation. He sprang to his feet and embraced his wife, who was struggling to sit up and weeping.
The operator, with a quiet tact, left them alone together. Colin, holding his wife in his arms, seeing her tears, rested his hands over the tautness and stretch of his wife’s stomach. Feeling his karate babies kick out, he knew beyond question, knew without a second’s doubt, that grace existed, and grace had been bestowed on them.
Their silent watcher, Jippy, cocooned in his dreamings, knew this too. He watched a little longer and a little longer, until he was sure these babies were safely born. They were. He found he could relinquish his dreamings now. Recalling his spell, that orange and those two eggs, he sighed. His powers were greater than he had realized, he thought; in the future, he would have to be more careful. He yawned; then, reassured to have seen the good, forgetting the bad, he let his dreamings go.
He closed his clairvoyant eyes. Hearing his lover make some small sound, he clasped his hand, then lay down and fell asleep beside him.
THE END