Pack of Cards

  ‘Things,’ he said, ‘are so inconstant. That's the trouble.’

  ‘Buildings don't move. If it isn't where I think it was then it isn't. Places stay the same.’

  ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘It's nice there's something to rely on.’

  ‘Where are the children? There's the most unearthly hush.’

  He stared at her over the rim of the glass. ‘Let me see now … I was told. Out. Out at … a music lesson?’

  ‘I do envy you,’ she said, ‘that capacity for insulation.’

  ‘It's been put to the test these last few years, I must admit.’

  ‘They are perfectly delightful, as children go.’

  ‘So I'm told.’

  ‘How odd it is,’ she said, ‘to think that then, in Venice, they simply didn't exist.’

  ‘Inconceivable,’ he said, ‘or unconceived?’

  ‘Both. If anyone had suggested then …’

  ‘Oh, quite. Astonishment would have laid us flat. It would have spoiled,’ he went on, ‘a rather nice little holiday.’

  Beneath the gleaming ceilings shuffles the crowd, necks askance, speaking with tongues. A river of people, self-perpetuating, surely, there cannot be so many different people passing this way. In at one end, out at the other, drifting through. I find a point where I can sit before a tumultuous canvas; the painted people too are legion, saints and Christs and Marys and those who weep and those who watch. I consult the book. I look up again and Liz is there, plumping herself down beside me. ‘Do you like them?’ she says, and I consider the great spread before me, the great complex glittering spread. ‘Not that, silly,’ she says. ‘Them. Alan and Belinda.’ I reply that it is too hot for judgements and in any case I am hungry.

  ‘Your brother,’ says Belinda, ‘is terribly earnest about looking at things. Not,’ she adds hastily, ‘that he isn't sweet. He puts us all to shame. Dare we, do you think, move him on?’ And we look across the room at James, screened from us by people, an ebb and flow of bodies through which we glimpse James sitting with his book, his now battered book, relating this to that and that to this. I go and sit by James and James tells me about annunciations and crucifixions and resurrections

  ‘Spoiled? It might have made it more interesting. It would have added a certain something, you must admit.’

  ‘Spoiled,’ he said firmly.

  ‘There's the front door.’

  He took a third glass. ‘Let's hope I shan't be thought to have been extravagant.’

  ‘Oh – the picture. Of course not. She'll love it, I should think. Scuolo di San Giorgio – there, I've got it! Now I'm happy. It's maddening when you can't remember something right.’

  ‘Was it?’ he said. ‘I daresay. I'm never good on names. There was a dragon, wasn't there, and St Jerome with his lion.’

  A most humane lion. And fleeing affronted figures and greens and reds overlaid with a hazy gold, the sunshine of another century, it seems to be. 1 stand in a pleasant trance of observation, thinking of nothing, a pair of eyes, no more. I feel space occupied beside me; I glance; Belinda is sharing St Augustine – his window, his dog, his fallen book.

  We are linked by the permanence of the painting, standing for ever in a hot dim room; the painting is still there, in the mind's eye, but Belinda has gone, Belinda then, rubbed out by what has come since, Belinda cannot be retrieved.

  Well, I think, it's as well we did find it, James was right, or James's blessed book, they aren't to be missed. And I wander round the room, homing on this one and then that. I sit down on a bench and try to do something about my sandal strap, about my foot with its red itching groove. I stuff a tissue in and go back to the dragon painting. I look round for the others and see Alan buying postcards, waiting patiently in a cluster of people, his hands in his pockets.

  Belinda is standing beside James at the other side of the room. James stoops a little to hear what she says; she tilts her head up at him. I can see them still, but they are overlaid with the wisdoms of now; James looks down at Belinda, he smiles, he smiles at his wife.

  Grow Old Along With Me, the Best Is Yet To Be

  ‘OH, I DON'T know …’ said Sarah. ‘Decisions, decisions. I hate them. I mean, one of the things that bothers me is – would I stop being me? Would I change. If we did.’

  She wore dungarees in pale turquoise, and a white T-shirt. She drove the Fiat hunched forward over the steering wheel. Her face was engulfed by large reflecting sun-glasses across which flew hedges, trees, a passing car. ‘It's rather gorgeous round here, isn't it? Half-asleep, as though nothing happens in a hundred years.’

  Tony said, ‘We both might. It's a significant step in a relationship – that's the point of it, I suppose.’

  ‘And the point of waiting. Thinking about it. Not rushing.’

  ‘Not that we have.’

  ‘Quite. Shall we stop and eat soon?’

  ‘Yes – when there's a reasonable pub.’

  Gloucestershire unreeled at either side: dark green, straw-coloured, unpopulated. Trees drooped in the fields; a village was still and silent except for a lorry throbbing outside a shop. High summer gripped the landscape; birds twitched from hedge to hedge.

  ‘Half the time,’ said Sarah, ‘it doesn't crop up. One sort of puts it out of one's mind – there are too many other things to think of. And then it begins to nag. We've got to either do it or not do it.’

  ‘We've been not doing it for three years, darling.’

  ‘I know, I know. But all the same, it looms.’

  ‘We are actually,’ he said, ‘better off, from a tax point of view, unmarried. Since your rise. We went into that in the winter- remember?’

  ‘What about this – Free House, Bar Snacks. How much better off, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, I don't know. Hundreds, anyway.’

  She turned the car into the pub yard. ‘It's a point, then. Ma keeps saying, what happens if there's a baby? And I say well that would of course put a different complexion on things but until we are absolutely free to choose. The trouble is that dear ma thinks I'm on the shelf at twenty-six. I keep saying, there aren't shelves now.’

  The woman behind the bar watched them come in, a good-looking young couple, in the pink of health, not short of money, the kind of people who know their way around. She served them lagers and chicken salad, and noted Sarah's neat figure, not an ounce in the wrong place, which induced vague discontent. I'm dieting, she thought, as from Monday I am, I swear to God. She observed also Tony's tanned forearms, below the rolled sleeves of an indefinably modish shirt, like blokes in colour supp. ads. Thirtyish, nice voice. He didn't look at her, pocketing the change, turning away with the plates. She watched them settle in the corner by the window, sitting close, talking. In love, presumably, lucky so-and-so's.

  ‘Tax is certainly a point,’ said Sarah. ‘Getting dependent on each other is another. Look at Tom and Alison. But one still feels that eventually we're going to have to make some kind of decision. You can have my pickled onion.’

  ‘Lots of people don't. Decide. I mean. Look at Blake and Susan.’

  ‘I don't want to look at Blake and Susan. Blake's forty-two, did you know that? And anyway he's been married. Oh, isn't it all difficult? We decided no baby, barring accidents, at least not yet, and that was one decision. Thank God for the pill, I suppose. I mean, imagine when they just happened.’

  ‘They still do sometimes. Look at Maggie.’

  ‘Oh, Maggie meant to, for goodness sake. That baby was no accident. It was psychological.’

  They ate, for a while, in silence. At the bar middle-aged men, locals, sporadically conversed, out of kilter like clocks ticking at different speeds. The woman wiped glasses. A commercial traveller came in and ordered steak and kidney with chips. On the wall, hand-written posters advertised a Bring and Buy, a Darby and Joan Outing. Tony stacked their empty plates. ‘Not exactly the hub of the universe, this.’

  ‘It's rather sweet. Laurie Lee country. I used to adore that book – wh
at's-it-called? – we did it for O-levels. Sex in the hedges and all that. O.K. – I'll find the loo and we'll get moving. Where are we, by the way, I've lost track?’

  When she came back he had the map book open on his knee. ‘Let's have a look, there might be something to go and see. Oh, goodness, there is – we're not far from Deerhurst. Oh, we must see Deerhurst. You know – Saxon church, very special.’

  ‘Right you are. Do we have Pevsner?’

  ‘On the back shelf of the car. What luck – I never realised Deerhurst was hereabouts.’

  ‘Aren't you a clever girl?’ he said, patting her knee. ‘Knowing about Saxon churches.’

  The woman behind the bar, watching them, thought, yes, that's how it is when you're like that. Can't keep your hands off each other. Ah well. ‘How's the back, John?’ she said. ‘That stuff I told you about do any good?’ The young couple were getting up now, slinging sweaters about their shoulders, leaving without a backward glance. People passing through, going off into other lives. Young intense lives. ‘What? Oh, thanks very much – I'll have a lager and lime. Cheers, John.’

  ‘Drive or navigate?’ said Sarah, in the car park. ‘You're better with the map than I am, and it's all side roads to this church. I'll tell you one thing – if we do get married it's not going to be any flipping church business. That's what ma's got her eye on, you realise.’

  ‘There'd have to be some sort of do.’

  ‘We could have it at the flat. Cheaper. The do, I mean. And registry office. But it's all a bit academic, until we actually decide something. Do I go left or right?’

  Signposts fingered towards slothful hinterlands. Cars glittered between the hedges, sparks of colour in a world of green and fawn. On the edge of a village, washing-lines held up stiff shapes of clothes, slumping pink and yellow sheets, a rank of nappies. A man scraped around young cabbages with a hoe.

  ‘Corfu,’ said Tony, ‘was livelier.’

  ‘I thought we agreed never again a package holiday. Anyway, it's the new car this year instead.’

  ‘This is our fourth holiday together, Sarah.’

  ‘Cor … Hey – you're not directing me. That sign said Deerhurst.’

  ‘Sorry. My mind was on other things. Incidentally, what started us off on this marriage discussion? Today, I mean.’

  ‘I can't remember. Oh yes I can – it was you talking about this aunt of yours. Will you have to go to the wedding, by the way?’

  ‘I hope not. I'd be the only person there under fifty, I should imagine. No – hearty good wishes over the phone and that kind of thing.’

  ‘It's nice for her,’ said Sarah charitably. ‘At that age. If a bit kind of fake, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes. But for that generation there wouldn't be any alternative.’

  They nodded, sombrely.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Sarah. ‘And this must be where you leave cars. Good – there's no one else there. I hate looking at churches when there's anyone else. Where's Pevsner? We're going to do this place properly – it's supposed to be important.’

  They advanced into the churchyard. The church, squatting amid yews, seemed almost derisive in its antiquity, tethered to something dark and incomprehensible, uncaring, too far away to be understood. Its stone was blurred, its shapes strange and unlovely. Gravestones drowned in grass. An aeroplane, unseen, rumbled across the milky sky.

  ‘“… tall narrow nave of the C8” ‘ Tony read. ‘Seven hundred and something. Jesus! That makes you think, doesn't it?’

  ‘There's this famous sculpture thing over the door. An animal head. That's it, I suppose. Goodness, isn't it all sinister?’

  They stood in silence. Things that are so incredibly old,’ Sarah went on, ‘just leave you feeling respectful. I mean, that they're there at all.’

  They went into the church. Tony took a few steps down the nave. ‘Yes. I know what you mean. Even more so inside. All this stone standing for so long’ – he gestured at piers, crossing arch, narrow uncompromising windows. ‘Read Pevsner,’ instructed Sarah. ‘I like to understand what I'm looking at.’ They toured the building, side by side, heads cocked from book to architectural feature, understanding.

  The church door, which they had closed behind them, burst open. The sound made them both jump. Turning, they saw a man who stood framed in the gush of light from without: a tall man in tweed jacket and baggy-kneed trousers, an odd prophetic-looking figure with a mane of white hair, like a more robust version of the aged Bertrand Russell. A memorable person, who stood for a moment staring wildly round the church, at Sarah and Tony for one dismissive instant, and who then strode down the aisle searching, apparently, the pillars, and then back to the entrance and out, slamming the door.

  The vicar?’ said Tony, after a moment.

  ‘No. Frankly. That was no vicar. Funny to storm out like that, though. This place vaut le détour, as Michelin says.’

  ‘P'raps he's seen it already.’

  ‘Presumably.’ Sarah turned back to Pevsner. ‘Apparently there's this other carving outside, round at the back, we'd better go and find it. We've done the rest, I think.’

  She led the way out of the church and round the side, through the long grass and the leaning gravestones. And came, thus, upon them first.

  In the angle of a buttress, up against the wall of the church. The man, the white-haired tall man, his back now turned. Turned because he was locked in an embrace, a succulent sexual embrace (the sound, just, of mouths – the impression of loins pushed together) with a woman, little of whom could be seen as, eyes averted, Sarah scurried past, followed a few paces behind by Tony. Both of them at once seeing, and quickly looking away. Seeing of the man, his tweed back and his mane of yellow-white hair, and of the woman – well, little except an impression of blue denim skirt and plimsolls. And more white hair: crisp curly grey-white hair.

  They achieved the back of the church and stood peering up at the wall.

  ‘I can't see this sculpture,’ said Sarah (voice firm, ordinary, not lowered, rather loud indeed). ‘It's supposed to be a Virgin – ah, that must be it. Right up just under the window there.’

  When they came back past the buttress the couple were gone. The churchyard was quite empty. The whole place, which had briefly rocked, had sunk back into its lethargy. That crackling startling charge of passion had dissipated into the stagnant air of the summer afternoon. It was three o'clock, and felt as if it for ever would be. Somewhere beyond the hedge a tractor ground across a field.

  ‘Let's go,’ said Sarah brightly. ‘I think I've had Deerhurst.’

  The car was no longer alone. Two others, now, were parked alongside. Sarah whipped the key into the lock and opened the door. She plumped down into the driving-seat. ‘You know what? That was an assignation we stumbled into.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Where are they now, do you imagine?’

  Tony shrugged.

  Sarah started the engine. She said with sudden violence, ‘You know, it was a bit revolting. They were seventy if they were a day.’

  Tony nodded. Embarrassment filled the car.

  The Darkness Out There

  SHE WALKED through flowers, the girl, oxeye daisies and vetch and cow parsley, keeping to the track at the edge of the field. She could see the cottage in the distance, shrugged down into the dip beyond the next hedge. Mrs Rutter, Pat had said, Mrs Rutter at Nether Cottage, you don't know her, Sandra? She's a dear old thing, all on her own, of course, we try to keep an eye. A wonky leg after her op and the home help's off with a bad back this week. So could you make that your Saturday afternoon session, dear? Lovely. There'll be one of the others, I'm not sure who.

  Pat had a funny eye, a squint, so that her glance swerved away from you as she talked. And a big chest jutting under washed-out jerseys. Are people who help other people always not very nice-looking? Very busy being busy; always in a rush. You didn't get people like Mrs Carpenter at the King's Arms running the Good Neighbours’ Club. People
with platinum highlights and spike heel suede boots.

  She looked down at her own legs, the girl, bare brown legs brushing through the grass, polleny summer grass that glinted in the sun.

  She hoped it would be Susie, the other person. Or Liz. They could have a good giggle, doing the floors and that. Doing her washing, this old Mrs Rutter.

  They were all in the Good Neighbours’ Club, her set at school. Quite a few of the boys, too. It had become a sort of craze, the thing to do. They were really nice, some of the old people. The old folks, Pat called them. Pat had done the notice in the Library: Come and have fun giving a helping hand to the old folks. Adopt a granny. And the jokey cartoon drawing of a dear old bod with specs on the end of her nose and a shawl. One or two of the old people had been a bit sharp about that.

  The track followed the hedge round the field to the gate and the plank bridge over the stream. The dark reach of the spinney came right to the gate there so that she would have to walk by the edge of it with the light suddenly shutting off, the bare wide sky of the field. Packer's End.

  You didn't go by yourself through Packer's End if you could help it, not after tea-time, anyway. A German plane came down in the war and the aircrew were killed and there were people who'd heard them talking still, chattering in German on their radios, voices coming out of the trees, nasty, creepy. People said.

  She kept to the track, walking in the flowers with corn running in the wind between her and the spinney. She thought suddenly of blank-eyed helmeted heads, looking at you from among branches. She wouldn't go in there for a thousand pounds, not even in bright day like now, with nothing coming out of the dark slab of trees but birdsong – blackbirds and thrushes and robins and that. It was a rank place, all whippy saplings and brambles and a gully with a dumped mattress and bedstead and an old fridge. And, somewhere, presumably, the crumbling rusty scraps of metal and cloth and … Bones?