‘Oh,’ said Cherry, ‘I quite like it really. I mean, yes, it’s awful in some ways, Birmingham, but there’s a fair bit going on, and anyway, you can always find something, or make it yourself.’ She had had a pint and a half of beer and was very slightly tipsy; she had, Tom remembered, a weak head, a fact of which, in the past, he had taken advantage on more than one occasion. He said, ‘I bet.’
‘This is fun. Little did I think, this morning… It is nice to see you.’
He put his hand on her arm. ‘It’s pretty good to see you, Cherry.’
‘We don’t see each other for five years, and then twice in a month.’
‘Predestination.’
They laughed. Tom said, ‘Another half?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You. Up to your old tricks. Oh no, of course you’re not, you’re engaged, aren’t you? Oh God, do you know, for the moment I’d quite forgotten! She didn’t mind us going off like this, did she?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Oh, good. Martin and Beth said she’s awfully nice. I wish someone would engage me, isn’t she lucky. All I get is improper suggestions.’
‘Come off it. Beth was telling me a tale or two. Some love-lorn musician in hot pursuit. Blokes being cast aside like old gloves.’
Cherry grinned. ‘Oh well, I suppose I’m not the settling-down type, that’s all there is to it. I say, isn’t this just about the most revolting pork pie you’ve ever met? It’s a pity you’re not going to be here long – I could have shown you the jollier aspects of Birmingham. How’s this thing you’re writing going – are you going to get some terribly grand job when you’ve finished it?’
‘No,’ said Tom. He bought himself another beer, listened to Cherry chattering on, looked at her with appreciation. He thought what a nice girl she was, what a warm easy undemanding girl, and how appropriate her looks were to her personality, all that tousled dark brown hair and those expansive inviting breasts and that soft round brown forearm lying on the bar in such a way that you wanted to put a hand on it. He thought, with guilt and irritation, of Kate; he told himself with defiance that he had certainly not known at which blessed Birmingham school Cherry was to be found, and even if he had… Why, he didn’t even know its name. Oh well, yes, maybe Kate had said something. But even if it had been mentioned that time at Martin and Beth’s he had most certainly forgotten, or been too pickled to take notice. Hadn’t he? Nobody’s subconscious is that efficient, least of all mine.
‘Hey!’ said Cherry, ‘where have you gone? I’ve lost you. You look like someone who’s suddenly remembered they left the gas on. Are you worried about Kate? We’d better get back.’
‘I suppose we had.’
When they got back to the school the exhibition room was locked. There was no sign of Kate. They were on their way to the car park to see if the car was still there when Ron met them. ‘Oh, there you are. Look, she said to tell you she’s gone to the Museum to find this Mr Wilmot – he never showed up. She said she’ll meet you back here at three-thirty.’
‘There,’ said Cherry, ‘stop worrying. And now I’ve got you on my hands for another hour and a half. What am I going to do with you?’
‘Don’t you have to teach?’
‘No, as it happens. I should be tidying the art room… Oh, blow that, I know what we’re going to do – I’m going to show you how the West Indians are making sure part of nineteenth century Brum goes out with a bang. Come on – that’s my car, that ruin there.’
She drove him to an area of meanly terraced streets, scheduled for demolition, a superseded world of red brick and outside privies and corner shops long since closed down. Half a mile away, the tower blocks reared out of the rooftops, the shape of things to come. ‘There,’ she said, ‘isn’t it fun!’
The houses were painted; sometimes half a dozen of them in a row, sometimes just two or three out of a street. The bricks had been painted in thick, glossy violently-coloured paint: pillar-box red, lilac, orange, bright green, vermilion. And the lines of the mortar picked out in black, or sometimes white. The effect was startling – a joke, a gesture, something both sophisticated and child-like, gay, pathetic, defiant, indifferent. There was nobody at all about; once, a woman came to a door and shook out a mat – otherwise the streets seemed abandoned. And yet, were clearly not.
Tom said, ‘How extraordinary.’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Yes. I don’t know. Yes, I do.’
‘It’ll all be gone,’ said Cherry, ‘in a year or two.’
It was fine now. The tower blocks glittered in the sunshine, pearly glass, pale opalescent colours reflecting the sky, the sun, the slate and brick below. They floated, insubstantial, above the city. And Tom, looking along the bizarrely distorted street in which he stood with Cherry, kept seeing in the mind’s eye Doré-like images of these same streets, and the now quiescent chimneys of red brick factories and warehouses beyond: the shawled figures of mill-workers huddled in doorways, blackened shapes against blackened brick with smoke or maybe fog swirling at knee-height, the sky lit by the glare of a furnace. A cliché image, itself another kind of distortion. And the houses, meanwhile, had weathered it all, and stood to fight another day, or a few more, in their exotic fancy-dress. He studied the one nearest – two up and two down done up in glossy pink, each header and stretcher neatly outlined in black, the doorstep treacly brown. He said, ‘There’s been a lot of trouble taken. And a lot of paint.’
‘Yes. It seems a shame they’re coming down.’
‘Now where are you taking me.’
‘The canal.’
They walked along the tow-path. Black water rainbowed with oil slicks; grass-filled barges; derelict factory chimneys, puny alongside their bright new successors. Gutted car bodies; a little boy fishing; Thos. Samuels & Son. Coal Merchant Est. 1806, in ghost-lettering on a tumbled warehouse. ‘I like all this,’ said Cherry. ‘I come and sketch down here. I’ve got a thing about lock-gates. Shall we go on a bit?’
After a while she asked what the time was. ‘Ought we to be going back?’
Tom looked at his watch. ‘We’re fine, it’s only just past three.’
They walked until the tow-path petered out, obliterated by the tarmac of a new factory car park; ahead, the canal vanished into the black hole of a tunnel. They explored the muddy carcass of a narrow-boat; admired the repellent, primeval fish caught by another small boy; sat on a lock-gate in the sunshine while Cherry sketched. Tom said, ‘Well, I am glad I came, not the sort of day I expected at all…’ ‘It’s a pity Kate had to hang around for her museum man.’ ‘Mmn.’ ‘Oughtn’t we to be getting back?’ ‘I suppose so. Yes.’
There was a disquieting air of desertion about the school, when they arrived there. Cherry said, ‘Tom, are you sure your watch is O.K.? It must be later than we thought – everybody’s gone.’
‘Blast! It’s stopped.’
It was five past four according to the cleaners. ‘Oh dear,’ said Cherry. ‘How awful – she’ll have been hanging about up there. I’ll come with you, and explain.’
The exhibition room was locked and empty. On the door was pinned an envelope addressed to T.R. Tom opened it. ‘Have gone’, said a single sheet of paper, ‘Kate’. He showed it to Cherry.
They looked at each other. ‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear,’ said Cherry. ‘Now you’ve been and gone and done it.’ After a moment she added, ‘She might have hung on just a bit longer, I suppose.’
‘Yes, she might have.’
‘Is it me, partly?’
‘I should imagine so.’
‘Ah.’ She eyed him thoughtfully. ‘All the same, if I’d been her, I wouldn’t have given up like that. I’d have stayed and fought it out. You’re worth that much.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Tell her,’ she said, ‘when you make it up.’
‘Hmmn. I’ll see.’
‘And now I suppose we’d better see about finding you a train.’
Tom said, ‘I don’
t think I feel like finding a train. Not just yet, anyway.’
She said, ‘This is really very wicked of us.’
‘Yes, isn’t it.’
‘Nice, though.’
‘Mmn. Great. You know, one of the appealing things about you I’d forgotten is that your pubic hair doesn’t match the rest of your hair. It’s ginger. Distinctly ginger.’
‘Is it?’ said Cherry with interest. She sat up and stared. ‘I’d never really looked. Yes, so it is. Our grandmother had red hair, there must be a recessive gene in the family. I wonder if Martin’s is.’
‘I do like you, Cherry.’
‘I like you, too.’
‘I’m staying the night, by the way. I’ve lost interest in trains altogether.’
‘Oh you are, are you?’
‘If you’ve got any lovers coming round you’ll have to tell them to push off.’
‘I’ve been chaste, I’ll have you know, for the last seven months. No, eight.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘No one I specially fancy, I suppose. Hey, that’s rude, now I come to think of it. You’re implying I…’
‘I’m not implying anything.’
‘Have you ever been back to the Lakes?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Once with Martin and Beth. Same cottage. I thought of you’
‘Only then?’
‘Don’t be silly. I often have,’ She put a hand on his thigh.
‘Don’t do that. You’ll get me all over-excited again.’
‘So I see.’
‘I may stay here for days,’ he said, climbing on top of her, ‘So be warned.’
And the window, defined by the early morning light, is wrong somehow, as also is the warm naked body alongside, so that for a moment or two there is a panicky plunging of the senses, until the mind takes over and sorts things out. Which does not, actually, improve matters much. I have done that which I ought not to have done, and there is no health in me. At least the trouble is, there is rather too much health. I have trespassed against others, namely Kate, notwithstanding that in a way she trespassed against me first by storming out in a temper, but Kate is vulnerable in ways that I am not, through no fault of her own, and a compassionate man would accept that, and concede. The trouble is, how far, and for how long, can I be compassionate?
Chapter Eight
In dreams, one was always young; one was the real Laura, pretty and admired and sought-after, in the thick of things. Sometimes Hugh was there, but more often he was not. More often one was not attached to anyone in particular, with everything to come; sometimes quite fictional men featured, most explicitly. Kate was never there. From time to time, in the dreams, one was buying clothes: flowery girlish clothes, clear in every detail so that, on waking (lying in bed still sleep-ridden but with disillusion creeping in like the ticking of the dressing-table clock) one could see them still with perfect clarity. Pattern and colour and style – the set of a sleeve, gathering of a skirt, placing of a tuck. The shop from which they came, the price ticket. Except that the prices were all out of step: five or six pounds for a pure silk shirt-waister, shillings and pence instead of decimals. And always in the dream one had found exactly what one wanted, none of that exhausting frustrating search of real life, ending the day sore-footed and empty-handed.
Money had gone mad, Laura thought, nowadays. Bills came, and you looked at them, incredulous, and frequently sent them back to the electricity board or whoever with an angry letter because surely the stupid people must have made a mistake, added on an extra nought or something, it couldn’t be as much as that. But always, it turned out, it was. Oh, one knew about inflation and everything, but even so. And nice Mr Sidley at the bank had been replaced by a not at all nice young man with a horrid cockney accent who had written an unpleasant letter about the overdraft.
‘I shall have to go to Ashley Lister’s memorial service,’ she said to Nellie. ‘In London. It is a bother, but people would notice if one didn’t.’ And there would be one of those announcements in The Times, with a long list of names; Mrs Laura Paxton, she would say, not Mrs Hugh Paxton. She liked the sound of it: Mrs Laura Paxton. It was a name you would notice yourself, in a list, and wonder about its bearer. She would wear the navy coat and dress, not black, people don’t wear black nowadays, with a new hat if she could find something nice in Marlborough, and a silk scarf, not too bright, but not dismal either. No point in being dismal, Ashley was very old, he’d been ill for ages, his death was expected. And there would be lots of people one had lost touch with, old friends, and people who worked with Hugh at one time or another.
‘I am going to London,’ she said to Mrs Lucas, pausing at the hall mirror for a last check: yes, the hat was really rather nice. ‘A memorial service. A dear old friend who died recently. Sir Ashley Lister. He was Director of the Council of Archaeology in London before Mr Paxton, an old old friend of ours.’ Mrs Lucas, on her hands and knees dusting the skirting-board, made a non-committal noise that might, or might not be, an expression of interest and sympathy and Laura went on, ‘So sad. And while I think of it, could you be very sweet and peel us some potatoes for tonight, and the carrots. I shall be late back, and very tired I expect, it is a strain, this sort of day.’ In the train, she read the paper (the long-range weather forecast promised some hot weather; an acquaintance had died, and the daughter of someone Barbara Hamilton kept talking about was engaged; it sounded as though the electricity people might be striking again, which would be a nuisance) and then sat in her corner and watched Wiltshire give way to Berkshire and finally to the outskirts of London. Back gardens flowed by, long and thin with asphalted paths and blown washing and little glittering greenhouses and Laura, staring idly down, wondered how on earth people could live like that, cheek by jowl and with the trains hammering past. Once, the train slowed almost to a stop, and a small girl with short wiry dark hair, rather like Kate had been at that age, climbed onto a fence and waved. Laura, not waving back, thought that children looked dreadfully scruffy nowadays, all dressed alike in jeans and those anorak things, even quite nice children, the children of people one knew; she thought of a little tweed coat with a velvet collar that Kate had had from Harrods, and thence, for a while, of Kate herself, to whom she had spoken last night on the phone. Kate had been terse and unforthcoming and sounded as though she might have a cold. ‘Why are you sniffing?’ Laura had said, ‘have you got a cold?’ and Kate had said mmn, she supposed she might have, and actually she had a bit of a headache and maybe she’d go to bed early. ‘Nellie has had a touch of’flu,’ Laura had said with reproof. ‘But she’s better now, and luckily neither Mrs Lucas nor I seem to have caught it. I should take some aspirin.’ She is a bit wrapped up in herself, she thought, like all the young. As though they had problems; then, there are no problems, if only one knew it.
At Paddington, she took a taxi; extravagant, since she had plenty of time, but so much nicer. Then, of course, she was early at the church and had to stroll in the nearby park until there was a respectable flow of people going up the steps. Inside, she looked around with interest, and exchanged smiles – appropriately muted smiles – with one or two people she knew. There was old Lady Lister, very doddery poor thing, with what must be the son and daughter-in-law, and the grandchildren. And there was Paul Summers and the Sadlers and any number of other people from the archaeological world. There was a big congregation; a long life, many connections. Men in dark suits, looking not quite comfortable; women in hats and coats or suits they did not often wear. More women than men, oddly.
The service began. They were invited to pray for the soul of the departed. Laura sank gracefully to her knees (the woman next to her flumped down awkwardly, missing the hassock and scraping her chair on the stone floor; you can always tell the regular from the ceremonial church-goer) and recommended her old friend – no, acquaintance really, one hadn’t actually known him all that well – to God. ‘May he rest in peace’ she prayed. She did not really know wha
t was meant by that, and would not have wanted to enquire too far. Religion, after all, was meant to be a matter of comfort and solace, not something that raised awkward questions. She had always thought it very silly, the way people torment themselves about having faith or not having it, or worry away at what is implied by this, that or the other, or make a great fuss about switching churches. In fact, Laura had often thought that she would have liked to be a Catholic; she had always felt an affinity with those big busy cool churches abroad, the smell of incense, obsequious priests, candles. Even with the ghastly statues and pictures. But one had been brought up Anglican, and the processes of change would have been a great bother, and anyway one didn’t feel all that strongly about it.
‘Look after him,’ she prayed, ‘because he was a nice old man and actually he was very helpful to Hugh, years ago, he was on the appointing Board for the Directorship and Hugh always said he must have spoken out for him because David Spears and Russell Twining were both against him, and he mightn’t have got it if Ashley hadn’t been on his side. May he not have suffered much; may he have departed in peace. David Spears is dead now too, of course; Russell Twining is a Professor somewhere or other, one sees his name sometimes, he had a beastly overbearing wife…’ She opened her eyes and observed, for a moment, the officiating clergyman, his profile to the congregation, working his way now through the ramifications of Ashley Lister’s career. A glorious vase of lilies by the pulpit, not arums either, but the nice ones, madonnas and regale and turk’s cap. ‘Thank You,’ said Laura, ‘for the long and useful life of Thy servant Ashley Lister.’ She rose to her feet, and at the same time unobtrusively shifted her chair a couple of inches to the left; her neighbour on the other side, a rather fat man, had been sticking one hip into her for the last five minutes, and there was a good deal of the service yet to go.
She sang a hymn; she sat and listened to Lessons read by various people selected to represent the different staging-posts in Ashley Lister’s life. Somebody spoke about Ashley as a person and somebody else about him as an archaeologist. A choir sang. A string quartet played some Brahms: a secular touch that aroused Laura’s mistrust in the first place, though after a minute or two she decided it was a rather nice idea. Along with the rest of the congregation, she relaxed a little for the duration of the piece and looked around her, noting more familiar faces. Once, she caught her neighbour, the stout man, glancing covertly sideways at her, staring almost; he was very dark, the hand that lay on his knee sunburnt, the knee itself trousered in a style that Laura, also covertly inspecting, decided was definitely not English. Someone foreign. Ashley would have known quite a lot of foreigners, of course. She looked firmly ahead, to dismiss the sideways gaze (not that it wasn’t just a bit flattering), assuming a musically appreciative expression.