She went on sitting there beside him. She wiped the sweat off his face. She felt his hands to make sure he was not now chilled by the coolness under the tree. Sometimes she said, ‘Stephen, it’s Sarah.’ She made casual and even random remarks, trying to keep his exterior landscape in place: ‘Look, the horses are racing each other in that field.’ ‘That’s going to be a pretty good crop of apples.’ He did not look at her or respond. Not a hundred yards away was where she had seen him walking and talking with the neighbour Joshua. Now, that was Stephen, surely? That was what he was? A competent and serious man in command of his life? Again her emotions reversed, and she felt ridiculous being here at all.
After a couple of hours she said, ‘Stephen, I’m going to get you a drink.’ She went to the kitchen, directed there by women’s voices. Shirley and Alison were making pastry tartlets for that evening’s Ariadne on Naxos. They wore scarlet plastic aprons too small for their ample bodies. These two amiable, infinitely wholesome and reassuring women worked on either side of a table where heaps of flour, dishes full of eggs, and bowls of butter cubed into ice water made a scene of plenty, and they were giggling because Shirley had flour on her cheek, and Alison, trying to wipe it off, had brushed it onto Shirley’s plump golden plait.
‘Oh, sorry, Mrs Durham,’ said Shirley. ‘We’re just being silly today.’
‘I’d like to take Mr Ellington-Smith a drink,’ said Sarah.
‘All right. What? Orange juice? Apple juice? Pineapple juice? James likes that. Mango juice—I like that.’ And Shirley broke again into giggles.
‘Oh, Shirl,’ said Alison, ‘I’m going to lock you up if no one else does. Help yourself, Mrs Durham. It’s all in the big fridge.’
Sarah chose orange juice, thinking vitamin C was good for depression.
‘Do you know where Mrs Ellington-Smith is?’
‘She and Norah were around not long ago. I think they went upstairs.’
As Sarah left she heard the two young women start up again: giggles and teasing. It occurred to Sarah she was thinking of them as if they were two new-laid free-range eggs; and that she didn’t want to know if one was a single parent and the other looked after an invalid mother.
Stephen had not moved a muscle. She said to him, ‘Stephen, please drink this. You’ve got to drink in this weather.’ She set the glass down on the bench, but he did not take it; she held it to his lips, but he did not drink.
She said, ‘I’m going off for a little, but I’ll be back.’ She had to find Elizabeth. If not her, then Norah. It was mid-afternoon. She went up the steps at the front of the house, where Henry had stood looking after her on that last morning, and into the hall, and then into the room where the company had had their buffet meals, and through the room where the family ate informal meals, and then into the back part of the house, not to the main staircase, but the one where she had seen Stephen’s James stand to gaze out at the tree as if it were a friend. She went on up past that landing to a room that Elizabeth used as an office. She had to force herself to knock, because she was afraid of Elizabeth: not her anger, but her incomprehension. And what was she, Sarah, going to say? ‘I’m worried about Stephen—you know, your husband.’ And what would Elizabeth say? ‘Thank you so much, Sarah. It is kind of you.’
No reply. She heard voices. Yes, they were Elizabeth’s and Norah’s voices. It occurred to her that not only Elizabeth’s office but her sitting room and her and Norah’s bedroom were up here. She had never been into these rooms. There was a wide corridor with rooms off it, a pleasant corridor with old-fashioned floral wallpaper. It was dimly lit from a skylight and from the tall window halfway up, or down, the stairs. The scene was domestic, intimate.
She stopped halfway along the corridor. The strength was going from her legs. She leaned against the wall. Elizabeth and Norah were laughing. There was a silence, which Sarah was hearing as Stephen might, then more laughter, loud and conspiratorial, and the two voices were talking, and they went on in an intimate murmur, not from the office, or the sitting room, but from the bedroom. It was no use saying that Elizabeth and Norah often laughed, that women like laughing and make occasions and excuses to laugh, that often these two seemed like schoolgirls, enjoying babyish jokes. They laughed again. A small cold horror was invading Sarah, because she was hearing it through Stephen’s ears. It sounded suggestive and ignorant and even cruel. But of course they were not laughing at Stephen. They were probably laughing at some small silly thing. They lay in each other’s arms on the top of the covers, because of this hot afternoon, or side by side, and they laughed as the two women downstairs giggled at the flour on Shirley’s hair. But the laughter hurt, squeezed her heart, as if it were her they mocked…if so, fair enough; she was a traditional figure of fun. Why did she take it for granted they did not ridicule Stephen? Perhaps they did. Stephen had said he avoided this part of the house when he knew Elizabeth and Norah were up here.
They must not, absolutely must not, find her here. She crept down the stairs. She stood on the back steps, making and discarding plans, such as that she would put Stephen into a taxi and take him back to London. She walked slowly through the heat towards the ash tree. When she turned a corner, a brick pillar tapestried with variegated ivy, she saw the empty bench and the untouched orange juice, where she had put it.
She called once—‘Stephen’—in a low voice. Then she went fast, half running, along paths, past fields, looking for him, thinking, I’ll see him now…I’ll see him when I get to that tree. But the benches they had sat on were all empty, and the glade where the shooting lesson had gone on did not now have a post sticking up in the middle. It was only a sunny hollow patched with shade from old trees. It was much later than she had thought, getting on for five. Soon the evening’s audience would start arriving. She thought she might write notes for Elizabeth and Norah and leave them with the girls in the kitchen. Like this?: Dear Elizabeth, I came down because I was worried about Stephen. Perhaps you should…Or: Dear Norah, please don’t be surprised I am approaching you and not Elizabeth, but I cannot help feeling that she…
In the end she walked out through the big gates, then along the road, caught a bus and then a train home.
That night she rang Stephen. Never had she felt more ridiculous and she had to force herself to do it. It was because on the one hand there were all those acres, the house, his life, his wife; there were his brothers and friends everywhere, his children, their schools, where he had himself been…against this mesh, this web, this spread and proliferation of responsibilities and privileges, she had to offer only: let me bring you here and look after you. But this sensible offer did not get made, because when he answered his voice sounded normal. It was slow, certainly, but he did not mumble, or lapse into interminable silences. He understood what she was saying and assured her that he would look after himself. ‘I know you were here today. Did you come to visit me? If I was rude, I am sorry.’ She told herself, Perhaps I am exaggerating it all.
Two days later Norah rang to say she was telephoning for Elizabeth: Stephen had killed himself, making it seem an accident while shooting rabbits. ‘The rabbits are very bad again, you know. They got into the new garden—the Elizabethan garden—and ate everything to the ground.’
Sarah went down for the funeral service, which was in the local church. Several hundred people crowded church and churchyard. It occurred to her that Stephen and she had never discussed what they did or did not believe, or what he felt about religion, but this scene was certainly in key with what he was: the old church—eleventh century, some of it—the Church of England funeral service, these country-living people, some of whose names were on the church walls and the gravestones.
She went back to the house for the usual drinks and sandwiches. Every room she went into was crammed, including the kitchen, where Shirley and Alison were at work, both tear-stained. She glimpsed the three boys—pale and sick-looking—across a room, with Norah, but otherwise did not see one face she knew. There was a heavy,
gloomy, and even irritable atmosphere. Let’s get this over with. Condemnation. These people had passed judgement on Stephen and found him guilty. Sarah was accusing them of letting him down. She did not like them, or what she saw of them today. These are people—that is, the English upper classes—at their best at balls, formal occasions, festivals, when dressed in ball gowns and tiaras, the men handsome in their uniforms and their rows of medals and orders. But funerals are not their talent. They wore clumsy dark clothes and were graceless and uncomfortable in them.
When the crowds began to thin, Elizabeth asked Sarah into a gloomy room that had a billiard table in it and, on the walls, every kind of weapon, from pikes and arquebuses to World War I revolvers. Elizabeth stood with her back to racks holding shotguns and rifles, with a glass of whisky in her hand. She looked heavy and commonplace in her black. She probably kept it at the back of a cupboard just for funerals.
She was blazing with anger, her cheeks scarlet, her swollen eyes glittering.
‘Do sit down, Sarah,’ she commanded, sitting down herself and at once getting up again. ‘I really am sorry. You are such a cool and collected person….’ She did not say this as if she thought these were qualities to be admired.
‘Well, actually I am not.’
‘I’m not saying you’re not upset about Stephen. I know you were fond of each other. Oh, don’t think I mind. No, I don’t mind about all that. I never did. What I mind is—it’s the utter damnable irresponsibility of it.’ Here she collapsed into a chair and energetically blew her nose, wiped her eyes and then her cheeks. But it was no good; the drops that scattered everywhere were distillations of pure rage. ‘While the boys are young they’ll believe it was an accident. But they are already wondering, I’m sure. It’s very bad for children, this kind of thing.’ Again she blew her nose. ‘Oh, damn it.’ She took out a comb, a compact, lipstick, from a black leather handbag as solid as a saddle and good for many funerals yet. She began to make up her face, but tears oozed again, and she gave up. ‘We had an agreement. We made promises to each other. This place is a partnership.’
While it did not seem that Elizabeth needed more than a listener, Sarah attempted, ‘But, Elizabeth, don’t you see? He wasn’t himself.’
‘Of course I see it, but…’ Here she sat silent, sighing, contemplating (for the first time in this commonsensical life of hers?) the possibility that people could be in states of mind where they were not themselves: it was not a mere figure of speech.
From outside came the sound of cars driving away, the slamming of car doors, the gravel crunching under feet, loud and cheerful voices. ‘See you next week.’ ‘Will you be at Dolly’s?’
‘What am I going to do now? Oh yes, I know what you are thinking—that I have Norah. Yes, I do have Norah, and thank God for that. But I can’t run this place all by myself, I can’t.’ And now, overtaken by what sounded like incredulity, she let out a yelp, and down flooded the tears. ‘I’m not saying I am going to give up; I don’t believe in reneging on responsibility. Oh bloody hell, I can’t stop crying. I’m so angry, Sarah, I’m so angry I could…’
Sarah carefully asked, ‘Have you never found it all too much of a good thing?’ Meaning our old friend life, and so Elizabeth understood her.
‘Of course I have. Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t think it’s just a bloody farce sometimes? But you simply don’t renege. And he did.’ And with this, putting behind her the possibility—at least for this time—of understanding the country where pain is so much a cruel king that his subjects would do anything at all to escape, she jumped up, saying, ‘This isn’t doing any good. What I wanted to say is that I’ll keep on all Stephen’s commitments—financial, I mean. I am sure he liked your lot more than the other things we do. I’m not sure his preoccupation with Julie—you know, as a person—was always healthy. I don’t know if you knew it, but he was really obsessed with the story. I believe that suicides should simply be ignored, not made a fuss of in operas and plays and all that kind of thing. They are a bad example to everyone. Most people are really very weak-minded. One should remember that.’ Here she pulled a comb through her hair and then with both hands tried to push the lank—because soaked with tears—locks into place. She gave up and wiped her face with fresh tissues. This time the tears did not spring forth again. ‘Sorry about all this, Sarah. I’ll send you Stephen’s Julie stuff when I’ve sorted everything out. I suppose that museum should have it. But you decide. And there’s something he left for you. No, I haven’t looked at it. I saw the first page and that was enough. I don’t have much time for that morbid kind of thing.’ She handed Sarah a red exercise book, of the kind children use, and strode purposefully out of the room.
The exercise book had stuck on it a white label, and on that was a pencil scribble: This is for Sarah Durham.
The first entry was the date of the first performance of Julie’s music at Queen’s Gift in June. Day after day there were entries of single comments, thus: ‘I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this.’ ‘This longing is like a poison.’ ‘I think I must be very ill.’ ‘My heart is so heavy I can hardly carry it around.’ ‘Surely the word longing isn’t right for this degree of longing.’ ‘I understand what it means to be ill with love.’ ‘My heart hurts, it hurts.’
The handwriting grew progressively worse. Some entries were nearly illegible. The last entries were scribbled in formless writing, the end of the words straight lines, like the graphs of brain waves, spiky and full of life, but then, as life runs out, a long line going on and on.
The cries from the country of grief are impersonal. I am lonely. I am so unhappy. I love you. I want you. I am sick with love. I am dying of a broken heart. I can’t endure this non-life. I can’t endure this desert.
They are like bird calls: this is a blackbird, a gull, a crow, a thrush. Or like the songs of Anon:
An Englishman once loved a girl,
Oh woe, oh woe…
(Or Ob-la-da, ob-la-di!)
He heard her singing, lost his head,
She was a French girl, wild and free,
Oh ob-la-da, oh ob-la-di.
They told him she was dead.
Oh woe. Et cetera.
In November, Benjamin came to London on business, making it clear that he was staying for longer than necessary, so as to see Sarah. This was when she hit the peak, or the gulfs, of grief and did not have much energy for anything but a struggle with an enemy so strong she was tempted to do as Stephen had done, simply because she couldn’t stand the pain of it. ‘I’m not good at pain,’ he had said. Well, she wasn’t good at it either. She didn’t believe in it. What was it for? She read entries in his red exercise book again, those banal words, because her own diary was too dangerous, and asked, with him: What is it that aches? Why should one’s physical heart ache? What is this burden I am carrying? It feels like a heavy stone on my heart. Why does it? Oh God.
The year continuing mild, they walked a good deal around London and the parks, often following paths she had known with Stephen. Sometimes she felt she was walking with two men, not one. Stephen certainly was not dead for her, because she seemed to feel his presence close to her—better be careful, look what it had led to with him: did she really want to be possessed by a ghost, in the same way he was? When Stephen was truly dead for her, would she then begin to grieve for him? Or was she grieving for him now? While preoccupied with these thoughts, she had agreeable if sometimes slow and absent-minded conversations with Benjamin. He was entertaining her still. Some of the ‘projects’ she was sure he invented there and then, though he presented them to her with an emphatic solemnity which was part of the joke.
‘How about a van coming to your home full of materials or samples of materials? You know how they make you a suit in twenty-four hours in Hong Kong or Singapore? Well, you’d choose your material, give them something to copy, and you’d have it back in a day.’
‘You’ll make a fortune on that one, I promise you.’
‘You’re
sure? Well, how about this. We are thinking about reviving Leamington Spa and Bath and Tunbridge Wells—we would add gyms and health clubs and health farms and this new cold water therapy. All it would need is for some VIP to make them fashionable again. The way your royal family did with the old spas.’
‘That and a lot of money. You mean you can afford all that and your Kashmiri lake?’
‘I must confess that we have decided the Kashmiri lake was a bit too much for us. Money is a bit tighter than it was.’
‘But reviving all the spas in Britain—that’s all right?’
‘I believe in it,’ he said. ‘This is a downturn, that’s all. I’m sure the markets’ll pick up after Christmas.’
So the money men were talking in 1989, just before the new Slump, or, if you like, the Recession.
He told her, too, about his family. It was clear that between the two of them he and his wife made a good deal of money. His children, male and female, were in university and doing well. He showed photographs of them and of his house and of the Associated and Allied Banks of North California and South Oregon. He did this as if reminding himself, as well as her, of the value and worth of his life. Yet time had passed since he had observed her against the glamorous backdrops of Belles Rivières and Queen’s Gift. So how did he see her now? As glamorous still, and her life here in London, which was humdrum and at the moment unbearably so, seemed to him as sophisticated and worldly as the life depicted in books of memoirs about the theatre. Which he said he was reading. Surely her flat must seem to him small, a poor thing compared to the big house he lived in? But her rooms were full of pictures, books, theatre memorabilia, photographs of people she knew as friends or acquaintances but whom he thought of as famous. How did he see her solitary and chaste way of living? He imagined a lover of many years’ standing, and remarked that he envied him.