‘Are you implying,’ enquired the acquaintance huffily, ‘promiscuity?’
‘I just think that to infer it must have been Strong is pushing it a bit.’
‘None the less, I think I may push. A measure of intuition is permitted in our line of business. Yes?’
‘Hmn,’ said Mark. ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper. How goes it, anyway?’
‘It goes. And you?’
‘Ditto.’ They parted, amicably enough. Mark entered the reference in a file marked ‘Unconfirmed matters’, beneath which he had scrawled once, in red biro, in a moment of frivolity or frustration, ‘Lies and silences’. It was in these terms that he now thought of it, and within the file lay a gradually thickening wad of notes pertaining to things about which he was not sure, or about which there was conflicting evidence. Where exactly was Strong from April 1912 to the end of 1914? What was the real nature of his relationship with Shaw, superficially jocular in the letters but claimed by others to be one of mutual antagonism? Was he a closet Tory, despite his modish socialism? Did he fiddle his income tax in the thirties? Was he allergic to strawberries?
Carrie, who had at first found Mark’s presence unsettling, began to get used to him. She did not dislike him – she seldom, in truth, disliked people, having acquired massive powers of tolerance in youth during her exposure to Hermione’s friends – but she would have preferred on the whole that he wasn’t there. On the other hand she could see that he had to be, so there was nothing to be done about it. She rather wished he didn’t feel so obliged to keep offering to help, but couldn’t think of any way to deter him. She also felt a bit sorry for him; it couldn’t be all that much fun having to spend half the week away from his wife, whom she had thought very dashing. Never having been in close contact with the institution, Carrie had a puzzled respect for matrimony. Everybody seemed to want it, but most people who’d got it seemed to be complaining about it.
She usually got on well enough with people, though often she couldn’t think of anything to say to them. If you waited, she had learned, they mostly solved the problem themselves; the ones who didn’t went away. She frequently couldn’t think of anything to say to Mark, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was always asking her questions about plants – what they were called and where they came from – and she couldn’t imagine he was really interested in this. Being herself naturally polite, though, she respected what she took to be his motivation and supplied detailed answers. She was surprised when he apparently remembered all this information and came out with quite informed remarks. On several occasions he was able to answer queries from customers who came across him around the place and took him for one of the Garden Centre’s staff. Amused by this, she said, ‘You’ll have to watch out or you’ll find yourself becoming one of us.’ Mark looked smug; she was again surprised, and rather touched. Several times, though, she found him gazing at her in a way that was vaguely disconcerting; for some reason it reminded her of her old boyfriend, the proprietor’s son at the nursery where she had once worked, and anyone more different to Mark than him it would be difficult to imagine. He had been a motorbike enthusiast, and went on scrambles at the weekends; once he had persuaded her to ride pillion while he did a ton round a disused aerodrome, an experience she had not enjoyed. The involuntary association with Mark perplexed and embarrassed her. She was plagued with an uncomfortable feeling that others can guess what you are thinking – probably induced by cohabitation with Bill, who often did, and delighted in making her blush.
Carrie never minded being alone: another attribute gained in childhood. In fact she preferred it, in many ways. The passive and undemanding company of plants and birds was much more restful and in many ways more interesting. What she spent her days doing now was an adult and more purposeful extension of the way she had spent many days during her childhood, constructing small fantasy landscapes, making order out of chaos. Growing things, and then selling them, was much the same thing. She left most of the dealing with customers to Bill, who was better at it; her idea of bliss was to potter alone and uninterrupted among plants from morning to night. Her particular indulgence was alpines, a private side-line of which Bill mildly disapproved on the grounds that it was time-consuming and uneconomic. Carrie, though, persisted – a little guiltily – and got a great deal of quiet pleasure from her trays of Primula species and saxifrage, delicate infants thriving at her behest. She set out the mature plants herself on a special trestle table, arranging them with the seductive intent of a window dresser, and observed purchases with a glow of satisfaction. Much more fun than the purveying of some other grower’s hybrid teas or floribundas.
She was responsive also to birds and animals, especially birds. This of course set up problems, since for a gardener, and especially a professional gardener, birds are the natural enemy and should logically be exterminated or at least rigidly deterred. Carrie fed them, which made Bill cross. She also allowed weeds to flourish here and there: sheets of the blue speedwell that will cover waste tracts of ground, ground ivy and herb robert and clumps of mallow and purple loosestrife. She was, in fact, environmentally minded but since she rarely read newspapers or watched the television she had no idea that what she felt was ideologically bang up to date: it was simply the way she had always been, and the kind of thing she had always done.
Mark, deeply urban, was ignorant of these things, though appropriately respectful. He could name few birds and even fewer wild flowers. He kept asking Carrie what things were called, which she found surprising and faintly irritating: she wasn’t certain that his interest was serious. Also, it frequently referred back in some way to Strong.
‘Your grandfather,’ he said, ‘had a feeling for nature. One would expect that, of course, there was always an undercurrent of that around. The Georgian poets, and Hardy and the Mary Webb school, though of course he’d have been pretty dismissive of that. Lawrence he never had much time for – dark forces and so forth – too mystical for him. His line was more a good long hike and bluff appreciation of the beauties of the landscape.’
‘Mmn,’ murmured Carrie, intent on pricking out Primula seedlings.
‘And the travel books have a lot about flora and fauna. Not as much as about people, of course, which was what really obsessed him, but digressions on lesser egrets and pomegranates or whatever. Maybe that’s where you get it from.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Carrie.
‘You should read The Road to Anatolia. That’s particularly – visual.’
‘Mmn.’
There was a pause. Carrie set aside a tray of seedlings and started on another.
‘You aren’t really interested in him,’ said Mark.
‘No,’ she agreed.
‘What are you interested in?’
Carrie pondered. ‘Lilies. Clematis. Species roses – though not quite as much as I used to be. Sorry,’ she added.
‘I’ll stop talking about him,’ said Mark.
‘I don’t mind a bit. Just so long as it doesn’t make you cross me not saying anything much back.’
‘Would it,’ Mark enquired, ‘matter to you if I was cross?’
Carrie pondered again. ‘Oh yes. I mean, it’s much nicer if you’re getting on with someone than if you’re not, isn’t it?’
Mark strode to the other end of the greenhouse and back again. ‘Anyone?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You just like to get along with everyone, regardless?’
Carrie wriggled, uncomfortable at the turn this conversation was taking. ‘Well sort of.’
‘Some people,’ said Mark, ‘are much more important to one than others.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I won’t ask who’s important to you.’
‘No,’ said Carrie gratefully.
It was conversations of this kind – and there had been several – that reduced Mark to a state of mild frenzy. He was not at all sure whether she even liked him. Was she just enduring him? What was her relationship with
Bill? What about that journalist fellow? And how, above all, did it come to be a matter of such intense importance to him? ‘How are you getting on with the lass?’ Diana had asked, and he had mumbled, ‘O.K.’ ‘Of course,’ she pursued, ‘there’s no need to consort more than good manners require.’ To which Mark retorted, with a note of irritation, that she was after all the granddaughter and hence a somewhat central figure. ‘I thought she hardly remembered him?’ ‘That’s not entirely the point,’ said Mark. ‘Oh?’ persisted Diana. ‘In that case it must be a bit of a chore, with her being somewhat dim.’ When Mark had snapped that Carrie was not dim, Diana had gazed thoughtfully at him.
He should have pointed out, he thought afterwards, that nobody dim could be running a successful business. Indeed, a conversation along these lines took place only a few days later in the Dean Close kitchen. Bill and Carrie were sorting out their papers prior to the accountant’s visit for the annual audit. Mark was drawn in, allowed to sort invoices into chronological order. They all three sat round the table.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Mark. ‘I couldn’t cope with all this. It’s as much as I can do to get through my income tax return.’
‘Lack of too much formal education’s a great help in these matters, mate,’ said Bill. ‘It’s a known fact.’
Mark, always distracted by information, scanned a piece of paper which said that someone had bought two dozen silver birches and nine copper beeches. An afforestation maniac? ‘Well, Johnson of course held much the same view – “Trade could not be managed by those who manage it, if it were difficult.” ’ The remark, as soon as it was out, struck him as appallingly inept on at least two counts. ‘Admittedly that was in the eighteenth century, and it was brewing he had in mind.’
‘Ah, is that so?’ said Bill. It was impossible to tell if he was being sardonic or not. Mark sweltered with embarrassment. To his relief the telephone rang. Bill, answering it, said ‘Yes’ and ‘Will do’ two or three times in a low voice. He shrugged on his anorak and said to Carrie, ‘Just nipping out for a jar. O.K. if I leave you to it?’
‘Fine.’
‘That’s my girl.’ He dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘See you, then.’ He left.
There was a silence. Mark’s emotions had now switched tack. Unable to help himself, he plunged. ‘I suppose you and Bill will think of getting married one of these days?’
Carrie pushed her spectacles further up her nose and gazed at him. ‘Oh goodness, no. Bill’s gay. That was Ron, I expect. His friend.’
The kitchen, which had been seeming rather dark and oppressive, became suddenly lighter. ‘Oh,’ said Mark, airily. ‘Good Lord – I hadn’t realised. I’m never very good at these things. Well, well. Fancy that, then.’ He returned to the invoices, with renewed energy. After a moment he looked across at her again. ‘Of course, some people are both.’
‘Are they?’ said Carrie. ‘I didn’t know that. Do you think Bill is?’ she continued, with apparent interest.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Mark stiffly.
Carrie reflected. ‘I don’t think so. He’s awfully fond of Ron.’
‘Why doesn’t he live with him?’
‘Ron lives with his mum,’ said Carrie, as though this explained all. They continued to sort papers, in silence. Carrie, once, put out a hand and switched on the radio. Muzak chattered. She turned it off again, with a guilty look: ‘Sorry – you don’t like that sort of thing.’
Mark opened his mouth to prevaricate, and decided not to. ‘No, I don’t, I’m afraid. But it won’t bother me.’ Carrie, though, fiddled with the knobs. ‘Is this better?’
‘Well, yes, in my view. It’s Beethoven. One of the quartets.’
‘O.K.,’ said Carrie. ‘Let’s have that then.’
And so they sat together in Gilbert Strong’s house, listening – or not listening – to Beethoven.
Mark, back in London, went through the mail. There was a note from Stella Bruce, Strong’s one-time mistress, asking him to call her. When he did so she said, obscurely, ‘I’ve been thinking, Mr Lamming.’
‘Ah?’ said Mark. She was in her eighties: as soft and pastel as a powder-puff, glittering with paste and pearls, lipstick and nail-varnish, relentlessly feminine but, you sensed, as tough as old boots.
‘I enjoyed our little talk. I hope it was a help.’
‘Invaluable,’ said Mark. He expanded on this. She heard him out, with little deprecating noises, and then went on.
‘One is so anxious that you should really get to the bottom of Gil. He was a very, very complicated person, you realise.’
Mark acquiesced.
‘Probably I know that better than anyone. So I’ve been having a little think.’ There was a pause. ‘Come and have lunch with me one day this week.’
Mark hesitated, remembering the take-away kebabs. ‘Well, I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Perhaps a cup of tea …’
They arranged that he should call round the next day. Diana said, ‘What does she want, do you imagine?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Just attention, I rather fear. She talked for three-and-a-half hours last time. Mostly about herself.’
‘Well, at least don’t eat anything this time.’
‘I shall plead indisposition,’ said Mark.
Stella Bruce lived in a flat overlooking the river at Putney Bridge. The windows were tight shut; the room smelled of flowers and chocolate; the furnishings were all padded and gilded and swagged and fringed. Two walls were lined with mirrors; a fashion magazine lay on the coffee table. Stella, when Strong knew her in the thirties, had been one of those young women of uncertain occupation who hung around the edges of the book world, picking up parties, and from time to time, literary gentlemen. Their association, Mark now knew from other sources, had lasted for two or three years, on and off, while Violet Strong was still alive.
She ran, for a while, over familiar ground. ‘Sure you won’t have some coffee? I’m frightfully domesticated nowadays; one has to be. As I was saying last time, Gil relied on me for that stimulus he wasn’t really getting at home and I don’t mean just …’ – her eyelashes fluttered – ‘… just the physical side. Mental things too. I used to listen to him. He knew he could come to me and relax and talk and be ministered to. Like those sweet girls in Japanese pictures – what d’you call them?’
‘Geishas?’
‘That’s it. Of course, I was terribly young. And not awfully au fait. I adored Gil. But I have to say that he was not always … absolutely straightfoward.’ She gazed at Mark, who nodded, implying understanding or connivance or whatever seemed appropriate. ‘He wanted to marry me, you know, after Violet died, but some sort of instinct told me it would be the most ghastly mistake. No, I said. Friends, Gil, always, but not marriage.’ Mark, who had other evidence that in fact Stella had been supplanted by Susan some years before this, nodded again. ‘So there it was …’ she sighed. ‘And anyway by then,’ – delicately – ‘there was, well, another gentleman.’ Mark nodded again, suggesting respect for such range of emotional experience. Boredom, in fact, was setting in; the flat was unbearably hot and stuffy; it seemed unlikely that he would get away in under a couple of hours; he had probably already got all that could usefully be had from Stella Bruce, who was a pretty peripheral figure in Strong’s long life anyway.
‘He was, to be frank, a bit of a liar.’
Mark perked up. ‘Really?’
‘I don’t know if I should tell you this or not.’
He gazed at her, with an expression of attentive sympathy.
‘It seems, well, slightly disloyal.’
He inclined his head, ambiguously.
‘But the vital thing is that you should have the truth, for this book.’
He nodded, with gravity.
There was a pause. She leaned forward. ‘The Russia book – you know the one I mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘The one that was so well written up at the time. Everybody saying how super it was.’
/>
‘Yes – Long Weekend in the Caucasus.’ Strong, naturally, had latched on to the period vogue for travel writing. The Road to Anatolia had been followed only a couple of years later by the more ambitious Long Weekend – a considerable bestseller.
‘Gil never went anywhere near the place.’
‘Then …’ said Mark, after a moment’s digestion of this. ‘How … ? I mean, it’s full of the most graphic stuff.’
‘He bought it,’ said Stella. She eyed him smugly from her nest of pale blue satin cushions, pleased with the effect she was having.
‘Bought it? But how on earth … ?
‘Do you know about someone called Hugo Flack?’
Mark shook his head.
‘Well, he was a kind of crazy layabout who was around then – everyone sort of knew him vaguely; you ran into him at parties, he wrote a bit of poetry but he never really got anywhere and he was always broke, borrowing money right and left. You know the type … Anyway, he was going to do this travel book on the Caucasus, he somehow got the cash to go there and he looked around and came back with stacks of notes and then he never got around to writing it up. He couldn’t write for toffee, anyway. He got ill – he’d been drinking like a fish for years – and he came to Gil sponging as usual, and Gil gave him a fiver to get rid of him and then he started talking about the Caucasus stuff. Gil asked to have a look at it and Hugo brought it along and Gil offered him a hundred quid for it. That’s how Gil wrote Long Weekend.’
Mark considered. There was, one had to admit, a certain plausibility to it all. ‘Why did he do it?’
‘Because he’d promised the publishers a travel book and he needed the cash and he knew it would sell if it was right and he loathed travelling.’
‘How did he know this fellow – Flack – wouldn’t go round telling people?’
‘He didn’t. He took a risk. He couldn’t trust him, of course, but Hugo was a frightful story-teller, he was known for it, no one ever believed anything he said. It would be his word against Gil’s. And in fact Hugo died only a few months after the book came out so Gil was in the clear. No one else knew. Except,’ – coyly – ‘me.’