Spiderweb

  Stella parked her car and was directed by an attendant -also sporting the logo – to gravelled paths leading through gardens: ‘You’ll find them beyond the rose walk and the gazebo.’ The flunkeys simply wear a different uniform, she thought. Commerce takes over where the aristocracy left off. This place – this entire landscape, indeed – was a subtle fusion of what was and what now is. And what now obtains is what matters – the rest is ballast, or backdrop, or the submerged seven-eighths of the iceberg. On the whole, this has been the case wherever Stella looked. In Malta or the Delta or Greece or indeed Orkney the crucial issue for most people was whether or not they had a firm grasp on the twentieth century, by way of access to petrol-driven vehicles and an improved diet, quite as much as the defence of customary practices and beliefs. There was she, pestering people about their lineage patterns and their neighbourhood structures when half the time what they themselves were exercised about was the fact that they had not yet achieved a transistor radio or a motorized scooter.

  She found Judith squatting amid rubble, attended by a bunch of students, all of them stained pink with Somerset mud.

  ‘Hello there! Six more tiles today and we think we’ve got the outline of the perimeter wall. We’ll take our lunch break while you’re here and I’ll give you a run down.’

  The students wandered off. Stella and Judith sat in the gazebo.

  ‘Happy?’ said Stella.

  ‘Like a pig in clover. This only came my way because the young turks are all off at a Roman site that’s been turned up under the new motorway spur. The kids are on loan from the University. It’s a question now of fighting the building society for time. Men in dark suits keep coming to peer disconsolately, pretending to be interested.’

  ‘When we first knew each other you were a young turk yourself, I suppose. On that Malta dig.’

  ‘But it never felt like that at the time, did it? The first dig I was ever on, the director tried to sleep with me. A Cambridge professor, at that.’

  ‘Did he succeed?’

  ‘Certainly not. Though I considered it, in the interests of my career.’ Judith laughed. ‘Anyway, I was in love with one of the other academics and she wouldn’t even look at me.’

  ‘So what is this thing you’re rescuing here?’

  ‘It’s a twelfth-century chapel. Associated undoubtedly with the priory that was on this site until it was knocked down for the building of the big house.’

  ‘And what will happen to it?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll get buried under their wretched squash court. But I hope not before we’ve rescued any artefacts there may be and uncovered enough to make a plan of the structure. Anyway … it’s been my salvation. I was at a very low ebb.’

  ‘Your hands are certainly good and dirty now. You’re eating Somerset earth with your sandwich. Which looks delicious.’

  ‘Have one. Mary made them.’

  ‘Mary well?’

  ‘Mary’s fine,’ said Judith shortly. A pause. ‘Actually, there’s something I’ve been wondering about …’ She broke off – a change of mind, it would seem – and began to talk about the excavation. The tiles must be survivors from the original floor. Judith’s hope was that they might turn up fragments of worked stone to indicate the internal layout. She needed to get into a library to bone up – this wasn’t her field at all.

  ‘Sorry … blathering on like this. I get obsessed. So what’s been happening with you?’

  ‘I, too, have been applying myself,’ said Stella. ‘I have been thinking about gender and field-work.’ She described her article. ‘And how would that tally with your professional experience?’

  ‘Oh, sex is a central concern in archaeology. All those hot nights under the stars. But of course the objects of study aren’t around to complicate things. It’s nicely straightforward and enlivens many a dig.’

  ‘This is a serious piece I’m writing,’ said Stella.

  ‘Of course it is.’ A propitiatory grin. ‘And I am frivolous. Actually, some of your gripes apply. Machinery. Though I’m better than you at unreliable cars. Remember that heap we hired to drive around Italy?’

  ‘Vividly.’

  But it is not the image of the car that is lodged in Stella’s head so much as that of Judith herself. Judith is wearing shorts and a skimpy black top. She is darkly tanned. They are somewhere in southern Italy, stuck once more at the side of an unfrequented, shadeless, dusty road with the temperature in the nineties. Judith is bent over the bonnet. When she looks up her face is streaked with oil where she has wiped away the sweat.

  ‘Blast the internal combustion engine,’ she says. ‘If we were Romans, we’d be there by now. On foot. No damn spark plugs or batteries.’

  Cropped dark hair. Wiry sunburnt limbs. Something androgynous about her, thinks Stella. Timeless, too. She could be anyone, any time, in this place. Were it not for the car. This hopeless Fiat or whatever it is.

  ‘… looking for that Roman amphitheatre,’ said Judith. ‘Stuck by the road with the thing conked out again and then that guy with a truck turned up and towed us to the next village where his second cousin was the local mechanic. And you tried to talk to him in awful Italian about what was what in this village in darkest Calabria.’

  ‘I did?’ said Stella.

  ‘You did indeed. I saw a field trip looming. My God, I thought, we’ve got to get out of here.’

  This man is no longer there. Nor the conversation. Being towed over bumpy roads by a battered truck, yes, dimly. Loud and clear, on the other hand, is an old woman in black standing beside the car – the confounded Fiat or whatever – and holding forth in incomprehensible dialect. She makes gestures. There is a man in jeans and a grubby white vest who laughs and interprets. He is the mechanic. The old lady is his grandmother. She is blessing the car.

  ‘She may as well,’ says Judith. ‘A bit of extra insurance. If anyone has a line to the Almighty in these parts, I should think she has.’

  ‘… the old lady who blessed the car,’ said Stella.

  ‘Really? Her I’ve forgotten entirely. Anyway, it got us to the Roman site. That’s as clear as day.’

  But not to Stella. Just a hazy impression of hard blue sky, the surprising curve of ruins against a hillside, Judith scrambling hither and thither.

  It is moth-eaten, this fabric of the past. But Stella’s moth holes do not coincide with Judith’s moth holes, it would seem. Of course not. Unreliable witnesses, all of us. We select the evidence, or something does.

  ‘Hey – how did we get on to this?’ said Judith. ‘We were talking about your article, I thought. Which I’d like to read. Anyway, I must get back to the job in hand. Here come the kids. Hang around for a bit if you’ve got nothing better to do.

  So Stella stayed for a while to watch this strange and reassuring process of meticulous recovery, while somewhere nearby a lawnmower purred over the lawns and the distant chock of croquet mallets backed by cries of distress indicated that the Southwest Building Society trainees were nicely into traditional country house pastimes during their leisure hours. Judith and her assistants brushed soil from fragments of ancient walling; within the Manor initiates contemplated banks of computer screens. Stella sat in the gazebo and considered this interesting juxtaposition of activities until her own failure to contribute to either began to induce guilt. When she said goodbye, Judith was too absorbed to make a more than perfunctory response.

  Turning off the road and on to the lane she found herself confronted by a Hiscox tractor, roaring down upon her. She pulled into the passing place to let it by and caught a glimpse of Ted Hiscox in the cab, staring dourly ahead.

  They’d had a real set-to, their parents. She had begun it, of course. Going on about money. Most of it the boys missed, because it wasn’t a good thing to hang about when there was a row going on, but they heard bits through the open window. ‘This place was bought with my money and just you remember that … if it wasn’t for me, you’d be down at the Job Centre … it’s me keeps this
business going. Who does the accounts? Who got the loan from the bank?’ Their father didn’t put up much of a showing. Just ‘Shut up! Shut up, will you! Belt up, for Christ’s sake!’ She always won in a fight – with anyone, at home or outside – just because she never let up. She could shout anyone down. Eventually the other person had had all they could stand and backed off. Like animals. You saw animals doing that. Dogs fighting – the one that goes on and on and the one that gives up.

  Their father said, ‘Shut up! Just bloody shut your mouth!’ one last time and then packed it in. Went out. The door slam made the whole bungalow shake. Into the tractor and off. Probably didn’t even know where he was going – just had to get away from the place for a bit.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I anticipate a spot of bother with your gutters,’ said Richard. He stood in front of the cottage, staring up. ‘Distinct evidence of blockage. Not to worry – easily seen to. I can put you in touch with someone who does that kind of thing.’

  Gutters? Stella gazed, interrupted in the middle of other concerns. There he was on the doorstep, frowning at her roof. But of course, this is what householders talk to one another about. It is just that I am not aware of the dialectic.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Right.’

  ‘The angle of the chimney is a bit curious, when one comes to look closely. Did you have a survey?’

  Survey? Stella struggles again. She had been in the middle of some revisions to her article. Her mind was full of gender in field-work. She hesitated.

  ‘When you bought the place. Several sheets of paper which would have cited apparent defects,’ Richard explained kindly.

  ‘Oh, yes … there was something like that.’

  ‘A good idea perhaps to cast your eye over it again at some point. See if the chimney features.’

  He had a tool-kit in hand, the lawnmower in mind. She had not invited him. He had called by – ‘on the off-chance’ – and now she did not know whether to be irritated or amused. His clothes proclaimed his intentions – the deliberately selected gear or a white-collar worker about to undertake a blue-collar task. Slightly grubby trousers, sweater out at one elbow.

  ‘Come on, then. Tea or coffee?’

  Half an hour later Richard briskly admitted defeat. The mower required a spare part, which he would order and bring at a later date. ‘I’m sorry. I’d hoped to fix it here and now.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I live quite happily with a shaggy lawn.’ She saw his expression and laughed. ‘You forget that you’re dealing with someone unused to a settled existence. I don’t take easily to property ownership.’

  He considered this. ‘Maybe it’s because you’ve spent more time than most of us with those who don’t have much.’

  ‘Possibly. Though in my experience the less people own, the more furiously defensive they are about what they do have.’

  ‘Children always seemed to me to have an intense and innate sense of personal possession. As a parent, you spend much energy trying to temper this.’

  He had accepted a second cup of coffee. She saw him look around the room. Is he going to offer to come and redecorate for me, she wondered. And if so, what would I say?

  ‘Marriage, oddly enough, blunts one’s sense of mine and thine. Things become ours, instead,’ he observed.

  ‘It also fuels the acquisitive instinct, or so I understand. The married are the great consumers. I bet you are loaded down with possessions. I’ve travelled relatively lightly.’

  ‘I’ve managed to shed some now.’

  Tactless of me, thought Stella. Of course he has. Out of the family home, into that dapper little farmhouse. She searched for something to say in compensation. Nadine floated there again, gleefully feathering nests. Her room at college had cushions, a tray with a tray cloth, cups and saucers instead of mugs.

  ‘Something of a relief, I find.’ He glanced around the room again. ‘What you have, if I may say so, seems to be a nice combination of what is necessary and what has accrued, as it were. That khelim rug is Egypt, I suppose. Your Maltese dolphin door knocker. Things accrue, in marriage, but also two people seem to need so much more than twice as much as one person does.’

  When I’m married, Nadine used to say, aged twenty … when I’m married I’m going to have one of those sets of Danish dining-room chairs from Heals, and a Race sofa, and curtains from Liberty.

  ‘I don’t think I would ever have made the grade as a paid-up consumer,’ said Stella. ‘It’s just as well I’ve never married.’

  ‘Marriage is deeply corrosive, in many ways. Not least because it makes you unfit to live alone. I had not reckoned with that.’

  He was looking now directly at Stella, but she was barely aware of what he said. Nadine swarmed into her head. Nadine’s views on love and marriage.

  ‘I’m in love,’ says Nadine.

  Stella does a finger count. ‘One, two, three… That’s the fourth time this year.’

  ‘No. Second time for real. David Harrap and Bill Bates were passing fancies. It’s only been the real thing twice. This time I’m dying of it, no question.’

  ‘That man at Balliol?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Nadine. ‘I hung around the Broad most of yesterday and saw him twice. The last time he looked at me, definitely. He’s reading French, which is a problem. I m going to have to get an essay subject that means the books are in the Taylorian.’

  ‘Tricky, when we’re doing English II this term. You could do the French Revolution special subject next year.’

  ‘Next year!’ shrieks Nadine. ‘I can’t wait till next year. Even next week is bad enough. I’ll find a way.’

  She will, too. Nadine is single-minded where love is concerned.

  ‘You should try it more,’ she scolds Stella. ‘It’s heaven. So exciting. Every day is a cliff-hanger – will you manage to see him or won’t you? And then if things come to a head, it’s sheer bliss. I’m a bit worried about this one. I’m not sure that he’s that interested in women.’

  ‘Ah…’ says Stella.

  The young of the fifties were perfectly au fait with homosexuality, but less inclined to identify it amongst themselves. Girls like Nadine and Stella, whose antennae were acute, simply knew to write off a certain kind of man where romance was concerned.

  ‘No, no – not that. He’s a rowing man – in the college First Eight. He’s always in the King’s Arms, apparently – but how am I to get in there?’

  Again, women undergraduates of the period did not go unaccompanied into pubs. With a man, fine. Without one, a solitary girl would have to be very confident of identifying male friends immediately or risk grave embarrassment. A group of mutually supportive girls would prompt raised eyebrows.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ fumes Nadine. ‘They can go wherever they like.’

  ‘Well,’ says Stella, ‘you’re just going to have to spend a lot of time on the towpath. You can borrow my duffel coat if you like.’

  ‘You’re making fun of me. You don’t know what it’s like. Why doesn’t it happen to you?’

  ‘I believe in grand passion,’ says Stella. ‘I’m waiting for that.’

  There is some truth in this. Stella perceives, perhaps rather more sharply than Nadine, that this stage of life is in many ways a rehearsal. One is gearing up for what is to come, flexing the muscles. Above all, one is trying out for size various aspects of personality. Stella is not very clear yet who she is.

  ‘Oh, that,’ says Nadine. ‘That all ends in tears.’ For an instant there is a glint of a later Nadine. ‘You’ve got to find someone to marry, definitely. But marriage isn’t about grand passion.’

  ‘Hang on …’ says Stella, who sees that more than one seminal point is raised here. ‘First of all, you’ve just said you’re in love, and where you’re concerned that has always ended in tears rather than marriage so far. And what is marriage about, in that case? I mean, if it’s not passion. There you are stuck with someone else for ever.’

  Divorce is entirel
y familiar to the children of the fifties, but marriage is still viewed with disconcerting sobriety. It is seen as a permanent arrangement. Well, they will find out.

  Nadine ducks the issue. ‘Oh, marriage is for later. The thing right now is simply – men. Here we are, surrounded by them. Spoiled for choice. The point is to make the most of it – we’re never going to have it so good again.’

  She’s right about that, at least.

  You were bucking the trend, Stella heard Richard say.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Not marrying. It does you credit. The pressure was on, back then.’

  ‘For men, too?’ she enquired. One never really thought about their side of it, at the time.

  ‘Certainly. It was a wise career move, on the whole. You were seen as more stable if married. You’d made an investment, had more at stake.’

  ‘Is that what it felt like?’

  ‘No,’ said Richard, rather impatiently. ‘Not at twenty-five or whatever. It felt like falling in with an expected procedure. And having someone to go to bed with on a permanent basis. Nadine was very attractive.’

  We’re getting a bit near the knuckle, thought Stella. Positively confessional. ‘Of course she was. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately.’

  He shied away. ‘I’ll be off now, since I can be of no further use right now over the mower. The spare part shouldn’t take too long. I’ll bring the phone number for the chap who does the gutters.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Stella. ‘You’ll make a householder of me yet.’

  After he had gone she found herself thinking not of lawn-mowers or gutters but of Nadine again. Had Nadine continued to fall in love four times – sorry, twice – a year after her marriage to Richard? Patently not. Nadine had reinvented herself, as wife, mother and responsible citizen. Her letters had been full of Consumer Groups, protests against road schemes and campaigns for nursery schools. The skirmishes of love had been a necessary rite of passage, that was all.

  And I conjure up Nadine, thought Stella, because to do so is also to conjure up myself. There seems to be this compulsion to take stock, to see from whence and from what one has come. To look at the old photos.