He looks up from the spread photograph and stares out of the window, struck by this. Odd. All that swilling speech in the head comes from others, never from oneself. It is they who say things: you do not reply. There is no exchange; vital evidence is missing. And I’ve never been what you might call lost for words, thinks Glyn.
Interesting. The operation of memory would seem to be largely receptive: what is seen, what is heard. We are the center of the action, but somehow blot ourselves out of the picture. Glyn rakes around some more and finds that he cannot much hear his own voice. Just occasionally, in delivery of some lecture, or holding forth to a camera, but that will be because the lines have been committed to paper and so are familiar. But in all those scenes with others, he is silent—he who seldom was.
It occurs to him that there is perhaps a telling analogy to be made here with the silence of the dead. The myriad dead with whose lives he is concerned, whose affairs he tries to reconstruct from what they have left behind—brick and stone and the disturbance of the landscape and a blizzard of paper in a thousand archives. That great mute mass, who perpetrated everything but cannot tell you how it was for them, whose voices can only be heard at second hand, filtered, diluted, distorted. Yes, a pungent paragraph in some article. Make a note of it. The idea is not watertight—what about diaries, letters?—but it is worth playing with.
He continues to stare into the unkempt rectangle of his garden, in which a pigeon patrols the shaggy lawn and a squirrel pours down the trunk of the cherry tree in one fluid movement. He seldom steps into the garden, nowadays, and the house itself is simply bed and workstation. When in need of company he lines someone up for a bite in a pub—colleagues, one of his research students. For more extended solace there is Myra, who works in the University Registry. A discreet relationship; Myra has long accepted that a permanent commitment is not on the cards and that what is between them must remain a private concern. Myra cooks a mean Sunday roast, her bed is deep and soft; he keeps shaving kit and a toothbrush in her bathroom cabinet.
Glyn is now watching the squirrel, mindlessly. The squirrel loops about on the grass; from time to time it freezes, quite motionless, tail curved. Then it shoots into a bush and is gone.
Glyn surfaces, angry with himself: he is not a man who gazes out of the window at squirrels while working. This is the inertia of emotional strain, he decides. And it will not do.
He drives himself back to the computer. The aerial photograph remains spread out on the top of the cabinet; it has served its purpose, and other purposes which he had not intended. He jabs away once more at the keyboard; text piles up on the screen. And eventually honor is satisfied; the substance of this article is there. Final grooming can be left until tomorrow. Right now, he needs to get back to what has happened. He needs to get things into perspective, order his own responses, consider a strategy.
It is evening now—a long, light evening of early summer. Glyn goes into the kitchen, opens the back door. He has been cooped up inside all day; maybe fresh air will do something to alleviate his state of mind. He takes the old basket chair out onto the small paved terrace. He fixes a plate of bread and cheese, with a dollop of pickle, an apple. He opens a bottle of red wine.
He settles down out there, in the benign light of this fine evening. All around, the suburb is noisily appreciative: lawn mowers, children playing. Glyn is impervious to this; he is not here at all, not here and now, but grimly focused on an elsewhere.
He is at the scene of that photograph. He does not need the thing itself, he knows what he saw, just as the words of the accompanying note are printed in his mind.
Right, let’s be objective about this. What is there to see? Two people holding hands, in a way that would appear furtive. To hold hands suggests, well, familiarity at the least, but not necessarily a carnal relationship. The language of the note is intimate—“my love.” It is also conspiratorial. The implications of the way in which the photograph was passed on by whoever took it further compound the suggestion that something was going on that had to be kept under wraps. In other words, they were fucking.
Since when? For how long? And does this raise further questions? Was this part of a pattern? Did Kath skip merrily from one lover to another? And did everyone know this except for me?
Evidence, he thinks, I need evidence. Well, I can look for evidence. But first things first. What do I know that is certain?
He scrutinizes his marriage.
He considers the bald narrative, which would run something like this. On Saturday, August 25, 1984, Katharine Targett and Glyn Peters were married at Welborne Register Office. They took up residence at 14 Marlesdon Way, Ealing. In 1986 they moved to 29 St. Mary’s Road, Melchester, by reason of Glyn Peters’ appointment to a professorial post at the University of Melchester. They continued to live at this address for the duration of their married life.
There should perhaps be a preamble to this: Glyn Peters met Katharine Targett at the house of her sister, Elaine, whom he had known for a short while. A brief courtship ensued.
The facts. And Glyn is of course a facts man, par excellence. But he looks at these facts with fair contempt. They tell him little. They tell him only what he knows, and it is what he does not know that matters now.
It is the subtexts that signify, the alternative stories that lurk beyond the narrative. The fragmented versions of those years; his and hers. His own version has different facets. There is his life with Kath and his life without her. The times when they were together—eyeball-to-eyeball across the breakfast table, limb-to-limb in bed, out and about as a conventional couple—and the times when they were apart, when he was just himself, as he ever had been. Walking, talking, working, living a life of which she knew little, now that he comes to think about it. The sealed life of professional commitment.
And what about Kath’s subtext? For, of course, she too led this dual existence. And he knows nothing, now, of either, it seems. And her evidence is irretrievable, wiped, lost.
While his own is now fatally distorted. There is what he knows, and there is the lethal spin imposed by the photograph and that scribbled note.
When was this going on—her and him?
Glyn lays those years out for inspection.
He places them in order. There were the immediate postwedding years in London, before he got his Chair. The house in Ealing. The daily term-time tube trek to the college; teaching; snatched hours in the library. The vacation escapes—field trips, conferences, extended library time. And what was Kath doing? He remembers a spell helping out in a gallery, a period when she got involved with some festival and would vanish for days on end, a brief flare of enthusiasm as a tyro jewelry-designer in someone’s studio. But what about the rest of that time? Tracts of it. He samples his own returns from the college, of an evening, or from some excursion elsewhere. Is Kath waiting with a drink in her hand and something fragrant in the oven? Well, no—but that was never Kath’s style. If she was there, then often others were there also—that network of her chums, who now merge into one another in recollection. And if she was not, there was no knowing where she might be. A note on the kitchen table, perhaps: “Back later. Kisses. K.”
The move to Melchester, to this house. To a life of intensified activity, for him. And now Kath is more elusive yet. She discovers a talent for interior decoration; she stencils, she stipples, she rag-rolls. The walls of this house are a legacy from Kath. Glyn sees her up a stepladder, in jeans and a baggy shirt, her hair caught back in a cotton kerchief: “Hey,” she calls, “get this! How’s this for a designer home!”
The house is full of her. Coming in through the front door—“Hi! You’re here—great!”; in the bath, scented, foam-flecked, humming to herself—and he is deflected by desire; burrowed beside him in sleep—waking with a little grunt of protest as he reaches for her. He has lived with these ghosts for years—they were tamed, under control—but now things have shifted; he summons her up in anger and frustration. There she is, as ever
; but unreachable in a different way.
He sees her at some gathering in the university, being the professorial wife, which is not Kath’s scene at all. He sees the attentive glances of his colleagues, and tracks her progress through the room with complacent pleasure; she is herself, as always, but here she is also his—an asset, an accolade. Other men’s wives are dimmed in Kath’s wake.
And she has no idea. Afterwards, she says, “Sorry—I disgraced you. They were all in party frocks and I wore my denim skirt. It’s probably grounds for divorce.”
He examines those years. And everywhere there are perforations. There are holes through which Kath slips away. That year he was in the States for a month. Where was Kath? He has no idea. Was she alone here, perfecting her domestic skills? Unlikely. And if not, who was she with?
For suspicion smokes, now. Who else may there have been?
When first he knew Kath there were a couple of other blokes sniffing around, who had to be seen off. He cannot remember experiencing jealousy, merely a brisk and businesslike intention. Once he had seen her, he had known that he had to have her, and not just for weeks or months but for good. Marriage, this time. The absolute certainty of this surprised him—the onslaught of need. So those others had to be cut out, and the best way of doing that was by establishing possession as swiftly and as indisputably as possible. He assumed success.
That brief time is now compacted into an impressionistic blur of things said, things done. He is on the phone to her, hour by hour, talking, talking, but he cannot hear a word of his own, now—just her. She laughs—that laugh with an odd little catch to it: “Glyn, honestly . . .” she says. “Oh . . . it’s you,” she says. That breathless, urgent note. “I am listening,” she says. “I’m listening fit to bust.” And they are in his car, he is whisking her here, there, and everywhere, because he doesn’t want to let her out of his sight; he has her in the corner of his eye, her profile, the dark fronds of her hair against her skin. He takes her hither and thither—his siege of Kath is woven into the pattern of his working life. Kath climbs Iron Age hill forts, she tours industrial sites, she attends lectures. “We’re going where?” she says—incredulous, laughing. She is not always pliable. Sometimes she has slid away; the phone does not answer, she’s terribly sorry but she can’t make it. But evasion serves only to fortify Glyn’s persistence. “I’m doing things I’ve never done in my life,” says Kath. “I don’t know what’s come over me.” But she does know, she must know; Glyn has come over her. He is an unstoppable force; he has taken himself by surprise, as well as her. Who would have thought that he could be in this driven state about a woman?
Elaine stands by the mantelpiece. They are alone. Kath is out of the room; Nick is—heaven knows where.
“So it’s you and my sister, is it?” she says.
He spreads his hands—propitiating, placating. He has nothing to say, for once.
And the matter is never raised again. Kath announces that they are getting married. Elaine is at once brisk with plans—the reception in our house, leave the nitty-gritty to me, do you want a buffet or sit-down affair? She goes into cheerful overdrive, marshals lists, caterers, cars. “It’s too much,” Kath protests. “We could have a get-together at that pub by the river, just a few of us.” “You’re only getting married once,” says Elaine. “At least I trust and hope that you are.”
When they come out of the register office, Elaine is on the pavement with a camera. “Stop!” she calls. “Right there. Like that. Big smiles, please. Kath—give your skirt a tweak, it’s crooked.”
Glyn has by now consumed the bread and cheese, pickle, the apple, and two glasses of red wine, without noticing. The light has started to drain from the garden; all around, the neighborly sounds are subsiding—lawn mowers docked, children summoned within. Glyn has never had much truck with his neighbors; a student of communal life and activity, he is himself oblivious to community. So what next-door does or does not do is of no interest, and anyway he is off now onto the next level of churning thought.
He has reviewed the years with Kath, and has found small comfort. Now, he turns to Elaine.
He is going to show the photograph to Elaine. And the note.
She does not have to know. She does not need to know. She is better off not knowing. But I know, and I cannot bear to know alone. I need some community of outrage, or grief, or retrospective jealousy, or whatever it is that I am feeling. So I am going to show her.
Most of all, I need to know if she knew. Back then. If she has known since.
It is a while since he saw Elaine. Quite a while—a couple of years, perhaps more. So there is every reason to call her up, suggest lunch, a drink. . . . Such is the imperative of his condition that he is minded to get in the car next day and drive right over to her place—only sixty miles, after all. But that would not do. Nick might well be there.
He will have to be patient. A phone call. An arrangement.
Elaine
Kath.
Kath always swims into view just here, as Elaine waits for the traffic lights to change, with the Town Hall in Welborne High Street plumb opposite. Kath comes down the steps, again and again and again, with her hand on Glyn’s arm. Kath—a married woman, for heaven’s sake. Elaine sees her today quite clearly, just as she saw her back then, through the lens of the camera, having nipped out ahead to take the opportune photo: the competent elder sister who has masterminded the day. Kath is laughing. Someone has thrown confetti and there are bits in her hair; she comes down the steps laughing, forever and always.
Actually, just so long as I’m around, thinks Elaine. The lights change, the car moves off, Kath disappears. Kath is biddable now, docile, as she never was in those days. She comes and goes, and sometimes she comes when she is not wanted, but she is under control.
Elaine is in any case preoccupied. She is driving on autopilot now, nose towards home, and in her head she is back at the site she has recently left, where there is a garden to be designed. Elaine thinks laburnum alleys. She wipes out the laburnum and substitutes wisteria on wrought-iron hoops, underplanted with alliums. She thinks water features and woodland walks and walled vegetable areas. The wife wants a potager. Well, she shall have a potager. The husband, from the sound and the look of him, would rather be at the golf club, but he is very rich and has just spent a lot of money on a mansion in Surrey which must perforce be appropriately decked out.
The wife wants decking too. She has been watching television gardening programs and knows what’s what in garden fashion, or thinks she does.
The wife will not get her decking if Elaine has anything to do with the matter. She will have to put it across to the wife that what is all very well for a semi in Birmingham will not do for a 1910 Surrey stockbroker holdout with Lutyens-style features and two acres of grounds. The grounds are a mess, but they have interesting bones. Elaine spotted the archaeological remains of what must once have been a Gertrude Jekyll-inspired sunken garden, complete with rill and fountain. She will have that restored.
Definitely no decking.
“You’re so judgmental,” says Kath. “Don’t be so disapproving. Be nice to me.” She has come rooting back, superimposing herself on the Surrey garden. She is just a face and a voice, like the Cheshire cat. She does this. She has said precisely that, many times before, head slightly tilted, fiddling with an earring.
Elaine sends her away.
No decking, and the water feature will be the restored Jekyll-style rill. None of your excavated pits lined with heavy-duty polystyrene. The wife will not have heard of Gertrude Jekyll but Elaine will blind her with science, and since this couple are paying rather a lot of money for Elaine’s name and know-how, and because she is not some fly-by-night television presenter but a highly esteemed doyenne garden-designer with major projects to her credit, along with various glossy publications, they will probably feel outflanked and start to doubt their own desires. In a few years’ time, they will be displaying the sunken garden, the woodland
walk, and the wisteria pergola, and dropping Elaine’s name to the husband’s business associates, who won’t have heard of it but know a class job when they see one.
Elaine does not usually much care for her clients. She prefers them when they are the faceless apparatchiks of large corporations. The gardens of Appleton Hall, acquired by one of the big banks as a staff-training and conference center, were one of her most satisfactory commissions. No opinionated but unknowledgeable pair breathing down your neck and squabbling with each other about what they really wanted—just a businesslike brief, a budget, and get on with it. She is proud of the gardens of Appleton Hall—the parterre with the box hedging, the blue-and-silver border, the jewellike glimpses of surrounding landscape framed at the end of grass walks.
Elaine does not design gardens for suburban semis. The owners of suburban semis would not be able to afford her fees; there is a host, a multitude, of outfits around now which attend to the likes of them. Over her working life Elaine has seen garden design go from a rarefied activity catering only for the wealthy few, to a cottage industry available to anyone with a bit to spend on property embellishment. Gardening is a mania now, it seems. Time was, the nation’s gardeners were either obsessive specialists growing prize sweet peas in back gardens, or patrician experts presiding over bosky acreages. Nowadays, every house-proud couple knows their ceanothus from their viburnum.
Elaine is amused by this phenomenon. Her trade is now fashionable, instead of being either fuddy-duddy or elitist, depending on the perception. This is good for business, though she is well aware of bustling competition. But at sixty she is starting to wind down; she is being more choosy about commissions, she is capable of saying no when the job looks too problematic or too boring.
Once, she took everything she could get; that was when she was starting out, fresh from the years of learning plantsmanship, fresh from the time working for derisory wages in famous gardens to learn how it was done. She would design anything, back then: landscaping for a hotel forecourt, plantings for a new housing estate. She had to, as the most junior apprentice and general dogs-body for a slick little firm operating in one of the leafier parts of outer London.