But he has a life – a work life and a leisure life. His work life is focused upon one of those deeply specialist and exclusive establishments, off-putting to the ordinary book browser by reason of its minimalist window display (two or three choice volumes) and hushed interior (carpets, glass-fronted bookcases). Hugh’s work life centres upon the shop (that seems too mundane a word), though he is not often there, leaving it for the most part in the charge of Margery, who has been his assistant for many years – a brisk woman as adept at freezing out inappropriate stray customers as she is at recognizing and cosseting Hugh’s long-term clients. A cup of coffee for them, and a copy of the new catalogue – and a quick phone call to Hugh from behind the scenes if he is at home or in his club.
They come from all over, the clients. Collectors, dealers. American, German, Japanese. And Hugh moves around too, disappearing hither and thither for unspecified periods of time on book-related business. He does not expand upon these trips. He simply vanishes, and returns. Pauline will learn in due course that he has been in Los Angeles, or has popped over to Frankfurt for a couple of days. She has dropped him off at Heathrow once or twice – a figure in a shabby raincoat carrying a large battered briefcase. Not at all the inter national businessman. In the briefcase there are sometimes books. Hugh will dip in and pull out a first edition Joyce, or a Nonesuch Shakespeare. Once, he unfurled from a sheet of The Times a tiny volume of eighteenth-century erotica, with delicate little pictures of couples in improbable postures. Not really his field, he explained sheepishly, but it happened to come his way and he knew just where to unload it. Pauline remarked on the fine binding and the charmingly engraved frontispiece. ‘Oh yes,’ said Hugh. ‘Your porn merchant has always liked a nice-looking book.’
Pauline would be distinctly miffed if she found that Hugh was sleeping with someone else. An irrational and possessive attitude, she would be the first to admit. Probably he is not. She knows the pattern of his life – the lunches at his club, the journeyings around the country to view executors’ sales or visit clients, the afternoons pottering with catalogues and correspondence in his office behind the shop. Of course, he could be getting up to anything on those sudden sorties across the Atlantic or the Channel. And in the last resort she has no claim on him, none whatsoever. Nor he on her. Each is fond of the other, but fonder yet of an entrenched independence.
‘I had to nip over to Paris last week,’ says Hugh. ‘I had some extraordinarily good nosh. I’ve found a new place.’ He proceeds to detail two lunches and a dinner. Pauline listens with indulgence. She has never been able to share Hugh’s obsession with good food. Sometimes she sees it as comfort eating, a desperate compensation for the things that have gone wrong in his life. Or it may just be that Hugh responds to elegant cooking in the same way that he responds to a well-made book. And he is not boring when he talks about food – he brings to the subject all the infectious intensity of an obsession. She enjoys sharing a classy meal with Hugh while recognizing that her level of appreciation is woefully short of his, and that he knows this.
‘And I went to the Russian icon exhibition,’ he continues. ‘Superb. You’d love it.’
‘I’m sure I would. Lucky you. Down here we have nothing but rural fayres and car-boot sales. I am threatened with a summer of stately home visiting – Maurice is doing homework for his tourist book.’
‘Come up to town for the weekend. I can see if I could get tickets for the ENO Parsifal.’
‘Mmn … Maybe a bit later on. I’m nicely acclimatized here at the moment.’
‘Well, my dear,’ says Hugh. ‘If you insist on this course of self-immolation there’s nothing I can do. Eventually I shall be forced to come down and take you out for a decent meal, if nothing else.’
Pauline laughs. She hears Margery’s voice in the background, with some discreet request. Hugh must be in the office behind the shop. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he says. They chat for a few moments longer, and then she puts the phone down.
Hugh would have made someone a good father. But Hugh and Elaine are childless. Pauline has sometimes seen a complicated expression on Hugh’s face when children are talked about. He likes the young – he has always taken a benign interest in Teresa.
He would have made Teresa a good father, no doubt.
For some years after Teresa became effectively fatherless she would say to Pauline from time to time, ‘Dad is going to come back really, isn’t he?’
‘No,’ Pauline would say. ‘He isn’t, I’m afraid.’ And the child’s expectant face would wither in disappointment and disbelief.
Teresa has long since come to terms with her father’s defection, but she remains fatally endowed with expectations for the best. Being herself without malevolence, deviousness or duplicity she expects others to behave as she would and is perplexed rather than enlightened when they do not. She has never become attuned to the treachery of circumstance. When the rocks loom she does not recognize them.
Teresa has always allowed things to happen to her. As a child, she seemed to move about in a trance. In adolescence, she was like a sleepwalker, drifting from one day into another. Pauline, exasperated, would try to chivvy her into a more aggressive state. Teresa’s peers, by contrast, seemed all to seize life by the scruff of the neck, jockeying for position with university entrance authorities, besieging employment agencies. Teresa said she would like to go to art school.
‘Then do something about it,’ exhorted Pauline. ‘Fill in entrance forms. Get competitive. They’re not going to send a chauffeured car for you, you know.’
Teresa looked pained.
But she is not spineless. Nor is she lumpen, lazy or unmotivated. The problem is this misplaced belief that everything will turn out all right. Teresa had a talent for design and construction, which blossomed from an absorption with paints and paper in infancy into an ability to make bizarre constructions out of improbable materials. When she was a child the house was always full of gaudy sculptures created from domestic litter – brilliant esoteric birds, architectural fantasies. At school, she spent most of her time in the art room, in a contented trance. This was the sort of thing she was going to do in life – so what was the problem?
Teresa did go to art school, forced to match up her own ambitions with the requirements of the system. If you are going to earn your living doing what you want to do and what you enjoy doing, then you have to discover how to sell your abilities. Teresa battled with entrance forms and interviews, fetched up at a London art college, and emerged with distinctly marketable skills. By the time she met Maurice she was happily established as a freelance designer, equally prepared to set up a window display in a high-class emporium or to supply artefacts for a theatre design department.
Teresa’s career is pretty well in abeyance right now, on account of Luke. She does not seem unduly disturbed about this – yet. And perhaps, thinks Pauline, there will be another child. Perhaps.
When Teresa told Pauline that she was going to marry Maurice she said, with absolute sincerity, ‘I didn’t know you could be so happy’ – and Pauline had been overcome with dismay. Not just because of Maurice (you don’t know him all that well, she told herself. He could turn out quite differently. And the fifteen years are neither here nor there) but because Teresa meant what she said. She spoke as though she had been granted an extra sense. And Pauline could see nothing but an awful vulnerability. The blazing expectation in Teresa’s face made her seem like a child again – a child up against the treachery of circumstance.
Down below, a door bangs. Maurice has come out of the cottage. Pauline watches him head for his car, get in, start the engine, back up and out on to the track. He drives off, rather too fast. Where is he going? The morning’s work does not prosper, presumably. And Maurice is forever restless. He will take off, suddenly, without saying why or whither. I never know where he is, says Teresa placidly.
Right now, Pauline guesses, he is probably heading for the village to get an extra newspaper, or to satisfy some
other need. She dismisses Maurice, and turns at last to her mail: the electricity bill, her bank statement, payment for an editorial job, two charity appeals and that airmail envelope with the California postmark.
4
The postman’s weather bulletin is accurate, as usual. There are cloudless skies on Saturday. It is a blue and green May morning, there is a crisp and sparkling landscape. Pauline, coming outside after breakfast, decides to set to and do something about her front garden – the small area in front of the cottage at each side of the path to the door. She is a desultory gardener, spurred into activity by spring and apathetic for the rest of the year. As a result of this the two beds are a confusion of overgrown plants – leggy lavender, a rose in need of pruning, a potentilla half-smothered by goosegrass, and a rich growth of couch grass swarming up through everything. Pauline inspects this and experiences the familiar seasonal burst of resolution. She fetches her gardening implements and gets going with the sun on her back and the wind in her hair, a businesslike figure in cord trousers and a baggy sweater.
Thus it is that Pauline is hard at work when a car comes shining down the track towards World’s End. She has forgotten the expected arrival of Maurice’s weekend guests. Of course, she thinks – them. And here is Teresa, coming out with Luke to wave and greet. Maurice has not yet seen or heard, presumably, up in his study.
‘This’ll be James and Carol,’ says Teresa. ‘You’ve been busy. I must do something about our bit, too. Unless …’
Teresa too is a perfunctory gardener.
‘All right,’ says Pauline. ‘If I don’t run out of steam. You’ve hardly got anything there worth keeping anyway. If I dig it over you could put in some annuals.’
The car has pulled up. Its occupants get out.
‘Whew!’ says James Saltash. ‘ “Fairly isolated”, Maurice said. He didn’t mention the half-mile drive across a cornfield.’
He is in his mid-thirties, tall and gangling, with black hair that flops over one eye. His companion barely reaches his shoulder. She has straight gold hair with a fringe cropped like a child’s. A trim figure nicely displayed by a tight black top tucked into a long green skirt. Thonged sandals, bare legs – an outfit a little too summery for the day, which looks warmer than it is. The town-dweller’s mistake, thinks Pauline idly, observing. She would like to get back to what she is doing, but it might look rude to do this immediately.
‘Not half a mile,’ says Teresa, smiling reproachfully. ‘But it is a bit bumpy, I’m afraid. Anyway, you’ve found us …’
‘Gorgeous place,’ states Carol. She has surveyed her surroundings. She beams at Teresa, and now at Maurice, who has emerged from the cottage.
‘Hi, James. Hi, Carol,’ says Maurice. ‘This is Pauline, Teresa’s mother.’
‘Hello,’ says Carol. The beam loses its intensity. She is not interested in someone’s mother, it would seem.
‘And Luke.’
Carol dabs a finger at Luke’s cheek. She is not much interested in babies either, by the look of it.
‘Have you got a plaster handy?’ says James. ‘Carol went for a pee in some primitive loo at a garage we stopped at and gashed her leg on a rusty pipe.’
Carol lifts her skirt to show a slick of dried blood across her calf. ‘I’m being incredibly brave,’ she says.
‘I’ve got antiseptic and things in the kitchen,’ says Teresa. ‘Come in. Mum – could you hold Luke for a minute?’
They all go inside. Teresa pulls a chair out from the table, and Carol sits. Teresa hunts in the kitchen drawer. ‘Here we are. Plaster. Savlon. Better wash it first.’ She produces a bowl of water and cotton wool.
Carol is the centre of attention. Even Luke is marginalized, gazing warily at these invading strangers. Carol props her leg on another chair, while James, on his knees, wipes the wound. Carol protests, laughing. ‘Ouch! James, you’re being absolutely brutal. Ow!’
Maurice steps forward. He squats down. ‘James, if I may say so you’re making the most awful hash of this. Here …’
And thus it is Maurice who bathes Carol’s cut, and applies the antiseptic and the plaster. He does the job with surprising efficiency, given his usual ineptness. James hangs over Carol, talking worriedly now of tetanus jabs.
‘James, don’t mother me,’ says Carol, laughing across at Teresa.
Maurice completes the task. He lays his hand for an instant on Carol’s knee, without looking at her, and says lightly, as though calming a child, ‘There, all better now.’ He turns to James. ‘Did you by any chance remember to bring a copy of Defoe?’
‘Sure did,’ says James. ‘Plus one or two other things I thought might come in handy. I’ll bring our stuff in from the car, shall I?’
The men go outside. Carol starts to tell Teresa about this extraordinary procession of antique cars they passed on the motorway, breaks off to call to James to bring her sweater off the back seat, please, resumes her account of the cars … dozens of them, is there some sort of rally going on somewhere, would it be fun to go? Teresa is wearing the stiff expression that means that she is not quite at her ease. How well does she know this Carol? Pauline wonders. Luke is agitating to be put down. Pauline sees her opportunity to escape, releases Luke, raises an eyebrow at Teresa and moves towards the door.
‘Oh …’ says Teresa, breaking into Carol’s flow. ‘See you tonight, then. My mother’s coming over for supper.’
Carol glimmers briefly at Pauline. ‘Oh … right.’
Pauline returns to her gardening. James Saltash takes a break from hefting possessions out of the car and comes over to say that he remembers they met once at … where, now? The London Book Fair, could it have been? And Pauline too vaguely remembers some passing introduction over a drink. She and James chat for a few moments, and Pauline glimpses the personality that accompanies the awkward stooping frame and the unruly black hair – a rather disarming combination of diffidence and enthusiasm, like a dog uncertain of its reception. A nice guy, thinks Pauline, but not Maurice’s type really, I’d have thought. Does he have the measure of Maurice, I wonder, or is he just an acolyte? Maurice does rather go in for acolytes. And what about this young woman? Her with the Dora Carrington hairstyle?
James disappears into the cottage. Pauline applies herself to the bedraggled rose, which is a thicket of dead wood. She forgets the visitors as she snips and tweaks, thinking of Harry, which is unusual, she hardly ever thinks directly of Harry. But of course there was that letter. She has not yet got around to mentioning to Teresa that there was a letter from her father.
When Pauline thinks of Harry it is always the Harry of then, not now. The Harry of today – unthinkable and unreachable – is on another plane of existence, and Pauline is not much interested. Somewhere out there on the west coast of the United States Harry is walking and talking, wowing his California students with his laid-back British style, driving some sleek automobile up the driveway of his sprawling white house, getting into bed at night with his wife Nadia who is thirty-nine and teaches Creative Writing. Pauline cannot conceive of this Harry, nor does she wish to. He does not concern her. Teresa has visited Harry in California – has stepped off into that other plane of existence, has stayed in the sprawling white house and later released to Pauline tactful anodyne nuggets of information: the vibrant flowers that grow in Californian gardens, the ubiquitous swimming pools, Harry’s flowered Bermuda shorts. She treads carefully. Pauline is aware of Teresa’s anxious eyes, trying to assess the effect of what she is saying. She does not want Pauline to be upset. Reminded of what happened. Made jealous.
And Pauline is more moved by Teresa’s anxiety than by any potent whiff of Harry. She would like to be able to say – don’t worry, it isn’t anything to do with me, all this. Him, now. Her, who is neither here nor there so far as I’m concerned. I’m not jealous. And I can’t be reminded of something that has never stopped happening. That happens all over again, at bad times. And I can’t be jealous now – who once was a jealousy expert. Who kne
w every refinement of jealousy, every nuance, every convoluted ingenious twist of the jealousy business. But she cannot talk thus to Teresa, because she never has done. Instead, she inquires keenly about the beaches, the shopping malls, the climate, and sees Teresa’s relief that the minefield has been negotiated.
Today Harry’s voice, his writing on an envelope, that California postmark, induce merely irritation. He has no power now – he is defused, unmanned. He is probably aware of this, and is accordingly offended. So he makes contact thus, tries to firm up a line between them. Pauline knows quite well what he would like. He would like a relationship that is subtly clandestine – a late flirtation with melancholy overtones. She has heard the proposition in his voice, has read it between the lines of his letters. And she has been filled with nothing more than mild outrage. Oh no, she has thought, oh dear me no. She sees Harry now as some feckless child whose excesses prompt weary boredom. He has become a shadow Harry – the potent Harry is the one who exists only in her head. This Harry, the forever emotive Harry, is lodged there for ever in some crevice of the mind, to come looming up and stop her in her tracks. He looks at her across a breakfast table. ‘So …’ he says. ‘Surprise, surprise.’ He rears above her in the bed, looking down with eyes that do not see her. He turns from an open window and says, ‘I’m sorry, Pauline. These things happen. There’s nothing you can do.’ Harry has gone, long since, but is forever there.
The rose is now tamed. Pauline straightens up, surveys her garden, satisfied, and goes inside. Later she will dig over Teresa’s bit. Teresa has quite enough on her plate this weekend.
The day tips over into afternoon. Pauline is busy. Once she glances out of her bedroom window and sees Teresa in the garden with Carol. Teresa is occupied with Luke; Carol sits on a rug with a newspaper in her hand and her face tilted towards the sun. Maurice and James are presumably closeted upstairs with Maurice’s manuscript.