She has done with Henry James and gone ahead, which gives him a chance to look at her. That stance. The line of her nose. The mole. Her hair against her cheek. He is washed with desire so intense that for a moment he feels quite unstable. But desire is unexceptional, and can be falsely prompted. There is something more besides, as though some famished, starveling creature tottered to its feet and sniffed the air.
He catches up with her at Rupert Brooke. ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d lost you. You’re still happy here?’
He is affronted, almost. He replies, at last, ‘I’m happier than I’ve been for rather a long time.’
Someone behind them is restive. They are monopolizing Rupert Brooke. ‘Sorry,’ she says, and they proceed, together.
They have circled this floor of the Gallery and are meeting up once more with Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Kingsley. Both are aware of this, and entirely unconcerned. Sarah is talking now about her work. She is an authority on eighteenth-century French miniatures this week, she says. And cameos. She talks of these. And Matthew thinks about happiness. It occurs to him that this is rarely identified at the very moment of experience. He would like to share this thought with Sarah, but is prevented by not knowing how to put it, and by some superstitious inhibition. And by the miniatures and the cameos.
She stops. ‘I’m talking too much.’
‘That would be for me to say.’
‘But you wouldn’t, would you?’ The smile again. Teasing?
‘No,’ says Matthew.
‘We’re back at Henry James.’
‘Why, so we are.’
And have been, perhaps, for some while.
‘This won’t do,’ says Sarah. But they continue not to look at Henry James.
‘What won’t do?’ asks Matthew, finally.
She waves at the walls, the pictures. ‘We’re not taking things in.’
‘I am taking everything in,’ says Matthew.
She gives a curious little sigh. She touches his arm. ‘All the same …’ she says.
He follows her, feeling still the print of her fingers on his sleeve.
She pauses. ‘Ah. Gwen John. Are you partial to Gwen John?’
‘From now on, enormously.’
And Sarah laughs. ‘You’re not even trying.’
‘I give a solemn undertaking,’ says Matthew, ‘that I will come here on some future occasion, alone, and pay proper attention and respect to all that the place offers.’
And even as he speaks he knows that this may well happen, but that for ever, now, come what may, Gwen John, Henry James and the rest will be enhanced. They will carry an indestructible freight of association. These moments are locked into their faces. These rooms will hold, for ever, this blaze of promise. Whatever the outcome.
‘Do you think we should go, then?’ she asks.
He is thinking, in fact, that he would like to stay here for ever, to settle down and live glowing in this good moment, immune from disillusion and distress. A craven thought.
‘Perhaps we should.’
They go slowly down the stairs up which they climbed an hour or so ago. Matthew knows that within that hour he has stepped from one state of being into another, from sickness to health, or possibly from tranquillity to dire peril, he neither knows nor cares.
They reach the bottom. They are exposed now to the blank collective gaze of the Royal Family. Sarah puts on the jacket which she has been carrying over her arm. Matthew helps her, his hand resting as he does so on her shoulder. He yearns for her now, both urgently and with total restraint. There is no hurry, no hurry at all. This will do. He can live on the riches of expectation.
He takes his hand from her shoulder, at last. She looks at him. Unwaveringly. And thus they stand, for ever, it seems, until she sighs again, and blinks. ‘So …’ she says. ‘So there it is.’
At twenty past three in the morning the moon had tilted right over the roof of the house and was spilling a parallelogram of pure white light upon the carpet. But insomnia was enjoyable. He lay with his hands folded behind his head, adrift, cruising from thought to sensation to fantasy, while the white shape on the carpet slid over to the wardrobe and began to climb the wall, and beyond the window the city roused itself into the distant roar of dawn.
‘Is there always another day?’ Jane had asked once, when he was putting her to bed, and he had reported the question to Susan, awed, and for a while, in good times, it had become a catch-phrase between them: ‘There’s always another day.’ And then the image had turned sour, and they had ceased to use it. And now, once more, he found himself in a state to lie in glad anticipation of another day. And another, and another.
But Jane’s question was ambivalent. She doubted, perhaps, the rising of the sun. An atavistic fear, and one with which to sympathize. We take for granted the comforts of reason. Maybe it is only children who preserve the complex neuroses of the past, the threat of the supernatural, the fear of the millennium, the ultimate unreliability of the world. Nowadays, we worry about being unhappy, as soon as we are old enough to observe the priorities. It must have been simpler, if more nerve-racking, to dread the apocalypse.
And, thinking this, that not only will the sun rise but it will rise with a new significance, Matthew himself slips from rationality to anarchy. He leaves the prosaic terrain of his bedroom and begins to glide just beneath the surface of consciousness, that indefinite but crucial shift which frees the mind of constraints and sets it roaming in the strange country where everything is possible, where nothing surprises, where knowledge and memory are unfettered by the tame expectations of reason. This is the landscape of the psyche – a coded medley of allusions in which the private and the universal are inextricably entwined. Here the mind creates its own images, a brilliant mythic universe in which there is no chronology, in which the laws of nature are suspended. Here the narrator is the Creator, setting his own stage for the flickering, fragmented narrative of obsession and anxiety.
And here, indeed, is Matthew, standing at the edge of a great complex of gravel-pits, an archipelago of muddy lakes in which there wallow herds of antediluvian creatures, a Jurassic Noah’s Ark, a lexicon of species, a thrashing slithering company of heads, humps, tails, flippers all boiling away there beneath his gaze.
He takes his companion’s arm. ‘Observe the ichthyosaurus, my dear,’ he says. ‘You will note the use that the creature makes of the vertical fin.’
She nods. She smiles. A wing of brown hair curves across her cheek. She lays her hand on his and he feels the fan of bone, and the warmth of her fingers.
On the far side of the gravel-pit is the skyline of a city, shining towers which rise from the muddy bank in crystal slabs of turquoise, pink and gold. It becomes imperative to visit this city, and they advance across the water towards it, the saurian herds now vanished, a vessel of some kind sprung up beneath their feet. And the city too has dissolved and been reformed as cliffs of ice, opalescent gleaming façades among which they drift, watching the birds that wheel and turn in silver flocks against the icebergs. And now there is another vessel, brilliantly lit, a craft with open decks on which people are dancing; he sees the name upon the hull – Rose – and the baskets of flowers which swing from the canopies, and the crowds of dancers. He is alone now, and is himself once more, Matthew Halland, and he passes from the vessel, the seas, the ice cliffs and is walking in narrow streets, between canyons of grimy brick, the blank walls of buildings within which, somewhere, a child is calling. Jane. He is running now, frantic, in search of her. She is lost, imprisoned, endangered, and he cannot reach her. He rushes to and fro in these dark alleys, hearing her cries, distraught, and then the walls have melted away, and with them his distress, and he is walking calm down a great wide moonlit street, flanked by ruined buildings – the skeletal frames of houses, with gaping windows and a void beyond.
Sixteen
‘I understand the investigation is closed,’ said the policeman. ‘With
a question mark still hanging around, if you take my meaning.’
‘I’m not sure that I do. You’re saying that your people still think there may have been arson but they’re not going to go on trying to find out who did it?’
‘That’s a bit of a crude way of putting it, if I may say so. And there does seem to be a distinct possibility of an accidental element, I gather.’
‘The possibility of an arson element seems to me distinctly stronger,’ said Matthew. ‘All things considered.’
There was a fractional pause. ‘What I was ringing about, Mr Halland, was really to find out if you’ve been having any more trouble yourself.’
‘No. Not since the rats.’
‘Which is … let’s see … just over a month?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I think we can probably take it you’ve been struck off the list,’ said the policeman. ‘But keep up the precautions for a while, just to be on the safe side.’
‘And what about Rutter?’ enquired Matthew.
‘We shall continue to take a strong interest in Mr Rutter, no question about that.’
He visited his mother, who scrutinized him with such intensity that he found himself avoiding her eye, as though in guilt.
‘You’re looking well.’ Matthew understood that she was not talking about his health.
‘I’m all right, Mum.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, it’s done you a power of good. And not before time.’
‘I thought I’d make a bonfire in the garden while I’m here. You can hardly see it for dead leaves.’
‘All right, change the subject.’ She chuckled. ‘You never were one for confidences, were you? Come on then. There’s newspaper under the sink.’
Smoke streamed against the white November sky. Matthew stacked up the rubbish, enjoying himself. He dug the fork in, loosening the pile, and watched innocent flames creep around the spent growth of his mother’s small territory. He thought of that other fire, and wondered how it is possible to be in a state of concurrent personal happiness and public disgust. Either this was the triumph of human nature, or its fatal flaw.
‘How’s that thing of yours, then, down in Docklands?’
‘The building, do you mean? Not far off finished. They’re laying the carpets and planting the trees. And the glass engraving’s going to be put up over the main entrance next week. You remember I told you I found this person who’s made an engraving of a ship?’
His mother nodded. After a moment she asked ‘Is it her?’
‘No. It’s not her.’
There was a silence. The bonfire spurted up, belched smoke, subsided.
‘Better damp that down,’ said Mrs Halland. ‘I’ll have the neighbours on at me. So the streets are paved with gold down there, are they?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Mud, more like. Shall I take you for a tour some time?’
‘No, thank you. I’ve seen pictures in the paper, that’s quite enough for me. It’s not a London I recognize, but then you could say that of a lot of the places, these days.’
‘That’s a perennial complaint, I imagine.’
‘You’ve left your mark, anyway. How does that feel?’
‘It’s a pretty anonymous mark. Not one I’m specially proud of, either. I’ll be glad to move on.’
‘Don’t stoke that fire up any more. We’ll go in now – it’s starting to rain, anyway.’ As they moved towards the house she said, ‘Your father was bored with his work, you know, all his life.’
‘I rather thought he was. Poor Dad.’
‘But that’s not to say he didn’t do a good job. Of course he did. Conscientious, that was him. And he’d never really expected otherwise. People didn’t. It’s been different for you.’
‘I know.’
On the back doorstep she paused, jerking her head at the fence. ‘Them next door. Young couple – nice enough. But do you know what he does for a living? Sells those machines they have in amusement arcades. A grown man.’
‘Maybe he’s got no choice. These are hard times.’
‘There’s always choice,’ she said sharply. ‘Your father’s firm made biscuits. He turned down a position once with the football pool people. I’m not saying the world couldn’t get by without biscuits, but it can get by without those machines that make flashing lights and silly noises.’
‘You’re a hard woman,’ said Matthew.
She grinned. ‘I ask you, what’s a fellow like that to say when he finds himself face to face with St Peter?’
‘A lot of us may find ourselves stuck for the right phrase at that point.’
‘Sarah?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hello.’
‘It’s Matthew.’
‘I know.’
‘Is this too early?’
‘No, not a bit.’
‘I wanted to catch you before you went to the office.’
‘You have – just.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Having breakfast. Opening my phone bill and two circulars. Looking out of the window.’
‘So am I. Looking out of mine. You are due north-east, by my reckoning. With three postal districts and a few million tons of brick and concrete in between.’
‘That’s nothing,’ she said.
‘And a few hundred thousand people. The first time I saw you, you vanished into them. For ever, apparently.’
‘Oh no – it was you who did that. I went back to the office and ate my sandwich.’
‘I’m sorry to be so subjective. But you were extinguished, as far as I was concerned. It’s a viewpoint children understand. And now you’re reduced to a voice.’
‘That sounds ethereal. In fact I’m rather sleazy in a dressing-gown, with toast crumbs and marmalade.’
‘What kind of marmalade?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It seems to,’ he said. ‘But never mind.’
‘No trouble. It’s Sainsbury’s Chunky. And I’ve just realized something awful – it’s after half past eight.’
‘I don’t want to let you go.’
‘I’m not going far,’ she said.
Distance, like time, is inconstant. The house in which Susan and Jane live is two miles from Matthew’s flat. Jane, when she returns there, is out of sight but on the same plane of existence. Susan is unreachable, as remote as though she were a thousand miles away or had stepped into another age. When Matthew mourns her, the person he mourns is not the woman who speaks to him from the front doorstep, or on the phone. It is not distance which separates us from others; space, like time, has its own elasticity.
Matthew, moving about the city in a state of heightened consciousness, is aware as never before of the fallacious nature of space. Sarah is right; she has not gone far, she never leaves him indeed, for she rides with him through the hours, a benign and distracting presence as he drives, works, eats, talks. But in his affliction, this heady detachment from the laws of nature in which the absent could be present and those he was with mere insistent shadows, the saw too how such contradictions are all around. There is no sequence in the city, no then and now, all is continuous. Equally, all is both immediate and inaccessible. Sitting in his car at a traffic light he listens to the anguished outpouring of an earthquake victim on the other side of the globe; his eyes meet for an instant those of an old woman crossing the road. He watches her – humped shoulders, legs warped by childhood rickets, tattered shopping trolley; a mysterious lifetime shimmers for an instant as she is lost from view, and the car is filled with that intimate distress in another continent.
And in his office, he is everywhere. He talks to Manchester, to Germany, argues with Reading and jokes with Cardiff. Twenty yards away, the people in the street are as remote as figures in a film – a panorama to engage the eye as he talks or thinks. In a haphazard moment he shares their space, but they are further from him than the glass manufacturer in the Ruhr to whom he talks, or Sarah Bridges, whose face and voice can
steal into his head and obscure all that he sees or hears.
‘It’s Matthew.’
‘Oh, good,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry. Tomorrow seems so far off.’
‘Yes. It’s been this morning for days and days now.’
‘Are you busy?’
‘Quite. It doesn’t help. And you?’
‘There was a board meeting. Now I’m on my way to Blackwall.’
‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘Don’t let them drop things on you. Wear one of those helmets.’
‘Damn.’
‘What?’
‘I’m in a call-box. I thought I had more change in the other pocket. It’s saying fifteen … fourteen …’
‘Oh dear. Can’t you …’
‘Eleven … ten … Now it’s unstoppable.’
‘What is?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you …’
‘Time. Seven … six.’
‘Try under the directories. Sometimes people put little hoards of ten pence pieces there and forget them.’
‘There aren’t any directories. Only beer cans and fag ends. And what I wanted to tell you was … I love you,’ he said. To a void, an absence, the humming silence of the receiver.
Time and space are illusory, and the city itself absorbs and reflects, so that here and there, at crucial points, it is both the same and different. It is infused now with Sarah. Here, she walked away down the street, in her red jacket; there, she halted at a zebra crossing, with strands of hair blown across her cheek. The streets have taken her; she has become a part of their allusive babble, the insistent inescapable murmur that is unique to everyone, the myriad privacies of the public place. Whatever happens, she will be out there always, along with the shadow of Matthew’s own well-being. He is leaving himself there too each day, and knows it. The allusions this time will be there, on that corner, beside that door, to taunt or sustain. Fleetingly, he thinks of this; unknowing, he greets that wiser incarnation of himself.
*
‘That you, Len?’ enquired Rutter, genially.
‘No,’ said Matthew, after three seconds.
Rutter, too, hesitated. ‘Who’s that, then? I know your voice, don’t I?’ There was a note of genuine perplexity.