Treasures of Time

  He had decided to go down to Oxford for a few days; there was stuff in the Bodleian he needed to look at. He could get a bed off Martin and Beth Laker, out at whatever that village they lived in was called. Kate could come at the weekend and join him.

  One would have to conspire with Mrs Lucas. Mrs Lucas would have to be asked – at some point when Laura was out – to investigate the garden shed to see if that old door was still there. And if it was, then Mrs Lucas would have to be persuaded to enlist her husband to give a hand with bringing it in and seeing if it could be transformed into a ramp to cover those pernicious steps down to the study. And if it could, then… Well, then the deed would have to be done – again in Laura’s absence – and one would have to face the consequences as best one could. The cold wind of Laura’s wrath would be mitigated by the pleasure of having got in there, of having by then gathered together at least the best part of what one wanted.

  ‘Next week, then,’ said Tony. ‘If that’s really all right with you, Mrs Paxton.’

  ‘Laura, please.’

  ‘Laura. That really is most awfully kind. I can’t tell you what a help it is on this kind of project to have so much cooperation. And I do want this to be a rather special programme. By the way, I had a nice outing the other day with your future son-in-law.’

  ‘Oh yes. Tom.’

  ‘Tom. I do think he’s such an interesting person. He’s very clever, isn’t he?’

  ‘Is he? Well, I suppose he has done rather well considering. I’ll see you next week, then, Tony.’

  Tom said, ‘I’ve not ridden one for quite a while. How far is it?’

  ‘About seven miles.’

  ‘Christ! I hope I’ll make it.’

  The bike, apart from being of the wrong sex, had chain trouble, and broke down somewhere outside Oxford. But Martin, of course, could fix that. He squatted by the side of the main road, cars and lorries flashing windily past, his black beard threatening to get tangled with the pedals, and sorted things out. Tom, watching, trying to stow his unsuitable briefcase more satisfactorily into the bike basket, thought with affection that of all his old friends, Martin was about the most stable. At twenty-five, he was a predictable extension of what he had been at eighteen. He had spent much of his spare time, as a student, fishing with a local angling club. Very coarse fishing. And going for long walks. And learning woodwork and welding and, as far as one could make out, some light engineering at evening classes at Oxford Tech. Reading English had been rather by the way. He was always tranquil, always contented, completely kind.

  They turned off onto less frequented roads. Martin said, ‘By the way, we’ve got a new baby, I probably forgot to tell you. A girl.’

  ‘That’s three?’

  ‘Yes. Jessie goes to the primary now. Beth’s very much into vegetable dying at the moment. I’m building an extension at the back of the cottage that we can both use as a workshop.’

  The Lakers’ visible means of support, it seemed, was ornamental ironwork, augmented by what Martin earned from craftsmanly assignments about the place; he was returning home now from a day spent on the restoration of some fifteenth century panelling in the hall of one of the Oxford colleges. He was building up quite an extensive word-of-mouth reputation as the chap to call in for anything requiring the kind of meticulous, solicitous, custom-built attention not available from the average builder. Tom said, ‘What are they paying you?’

  Martin named a figure.

  ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s not nearly enough. Do you realize that place owns half north Oxford? And vast tracts of agricultural England?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Martin. ‘Anyway, I like doing it.’

  The cottage was in one of the aeroplane villages. Its original small centre of triangular green enclosed by a dozen or so stone cottages and farmhouses, church and school, was held now in the amoeba-like clutch of two or three extremely functional housing estates for the aerodrome personnel. The aerodrome itself, enclosed in wire fencing, glittered all around, its long low silver buildings catching the sun. Aircraft went about their business all the time, roaring low over the rooftops, vanishing with plumes of vapour into the Oxfordshire skies. They made Tom feel anxious but the Lakers seemed to have become impervious. Beth greeted him with a hug. She wore a long brown woollen skirt, blouse pinned at the neck with a Victorian brooch, and a black shawl; she might, he thought, have been an extra on the set of a lavish production of a Hardy novel; he had always liked Beth. They ate a large meal, drank the bottle of wine Tom had brought and ended up in the pub, with Martin and Beth taking it in turns to pop back across the road to see that the children were all right.

  Beth said, ‘We want to meet Kate.’

  ‘I thought if it was O.K. by you she could come down at the weekend.’

  In the morning, he woke on the couch in the cottage’s only downstairs room to find Jessie, in vest and pants, contemplating him.

  ‘Why have you got your coat on over the sleeping-bag?’

  ‘Because I was cold.’

  ‘I’m not cold.’

  ‘I can’t think why not.’

  Jessie sat down on the floor and set about laboriously getting into a pair of greyish socks; her bony knees jutted above her bent head in attitudes of physical improbability, like a cat cleaning itself. She said, ‘We do numbers sometimes. I do it with Susie.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘When we do dancing we take our shoes and socks off and leave them by the apparatus. Aren’t you going to get up?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘Matthew wets his bed.’

  ‘I daresay it’s because he’s young.’

  ‘He’s two and a half,’ said Jessie after a pause. Tom thought: it’s funny, but I believe I like children.

  ‘Have you got pyjamas on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘I suppose you’ll have to, if I’m going to get up.’

  ‘Once I went swimming in the river, and boats came.’ She rolled onto her back, thin legs waving in the air, arching down over her head.

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Neither can Martin. I’m best at running out of me and Susie.’

  She sat watching in appreciative silence while he dressed. Overhead, he could hear Beth and Martin moving about, and the pigeon noises of the baby. Beth came down and made breakfast. Nobody talked except the children. Jessie said to Tom, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To read some books.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Now that’s difficult. Because I feel I ought to, I suppose.’

  He came back to the village early, and they all went down to the river. They sat on the bank, beside a creek muddied by drinking cattle, and ate the food Beth had put in a basket. The children played on the grass. The river wound in erratic bends through the wide, flat field, fringed with willows and teazles; on the far bank, a cluster of calves stared and snorted; Martin, lying propped on one elbow, explained about the formation of glacial boulder valleys such as this. He was a man who throve on technical knowledge, on explanations, on the analysis of how a thing is made or done; ideas did not interest him at all. He gesticulated at the river and the low encircling hills; over the fields a church clock chimed and struck; from time to time the quiet was blasted by aircraft arriving or departing. Martin talked about glacial deposits and boulder clay; Beth made a Victorian posy of wild flowers and stuck it in the waist of her skirt; Tom lay on his back, stared at the white scrawls of aircraft in the sky. He had declined the bicycle that morning and taken the bus into Oxford. Walking the streets, sitting in the library, he had been aware not of nostalgia but of a kindly detachment towards the place – there it was still, but personally one had moved on; the same feeling, he realized, that he experienced meeting his parents’ neighbours when he went home.

  That evening, he sat in the lean-to shed beside the cottage that served as a workshop, watching Martin at his furnace and anvil. Sparks showered into t
he dusk. Martin, leather-aproned, his face red in the firelight, was a Wagnerian figure. There was a smell of bread baking; presently, Beth brought them rolls hot from the oven. She sat beside Tom on the bench and said, ‘What will you do when you’ve finished your thesis?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s a good point.’

  ‘You’ll be married by then.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I will.’

  On the far side of the green, there was a continuous coming and going of motor-bikes, crashing into the peace of the place like raiders from another planet. Beth sighed. ‘It’s a bother, the Fox has become the pub where all the young go. It won’t last, though, they’ll take off somewhere else in a few weeks, it’s always the way.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Tom. ‘You’re doing a grand job over this side. William Morris would be proud of you.’

  ‘You’re laughing at us,’ she said amiably.

  ‘I wouldn’t have the gall.’

  On Saturday, when Kate was due to come down, he realized with mild surprise how much he had enjoyed the week – the chance meetings with one or two old acquaintances, the placidity of the Lakers, the laissez-faire quality of their friendship. On one evening Martin’s sister Cherry had turned up, with whom Tom had had a rewarding frolic in a Lake District cottage, years ago. They drank a lot of beer and played a wild card game; Tom felt exuberant and lecherous and, in the morning, guilty. He had imagined sternly that love cured one of susceptibility to one’s sexual past.

  Kate was startled by the Lakers. She stepped into the cottage with her defences up, Tom could see. She was uneasy, and acted possessively with him to compensate. Matthew, leaning against her knee, dribbled lovingly on her hand and he saw her expression of distaste, and quick furtive wiping against the chair. Why, he wondered in exasperation, is it that the easier people are, the more difficult she finds it to respond? She thought, he knew, that she was being disliked; she was misinterpreting every glance or remark. The Lakers had probably never disliked anybody in their lives; they suffered, if suffer was the word, from indiscriminate indulgence. They would have found excuses for Ghenghis Khan. ‘Come and see Beth’s mangle,’ he said, looking for a distraction. ‘I told her you’d probably know how old it is.’

  It was a nineteenth century iron mangle on a stand. Kate said, ‘We had one pretty well exactly like that at Lincoln. It’s about eighteen sixty to seventy, I should imagine. What are you going to do with it?’

  Beth said, ‘I use it.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To mangle with.’

  There was a tin bucket on the floor beside it, full of washing. Kate said, ‘Wouldn’t a spin dryer be more effective?’

  ‘I don’t imagine we could afford one.’

  ‘You could sell the mangle to an antique shop and get quite enough for a spin dryer.’

  There was a pause. Beth laughed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. ‘But do you know, quite frankly I don’t think I want to. I’ve got fond of it.’ She ran her hand affectionately over the ironwork. ‘It was in an awful state, Martin did it up for me.’

  Martin said to Kate, ‘You look a bit shocked. Don’t you like to see things like that still being used?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. It’s just – just that I can’t really see the point if there’s an easier way to do things.’

  Tom said, ‘Kate is sternly practical in her approach to the past – that’s what museum training does to you. It’s the rest of us who go in for misplaced romanticism.’

  Jessie, swinging from the handle of the mangle, was staring at Kate. ‘Why has she got a pink face?’

  Martin said, ‘Get off that, or I’ll put you through it with the nappies.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Just watch it, or I will.’

  ‘Go on. I want to come out all squashed.’

  Beth said, ‘Oh dear, you won’t approve of my old kitchen range, then.’

  Kate said stiffly, ‘It’s rather handsome, I was noticing it just now, but no, I wouldn’t want it myself. I mean, it seems to me if you can have something you can just switch on and off, then why go to all that trouble of coke and stoking and whatnot. I mean, that’s why new things get invented…’ She moved closer to Tom. The Lakers stood looking at her with friendly concern. Martin said, ‘Well, yes, of course. But if a thing is nice to look at and reasonably functional – and old – then isn’t it worth sacrificing a bit of convenience?’

  ‘I suppose it might be,’ said Kate, without conviction. There was a trapped look about her – both trapped and faintly aggressive. She went on, ‘I mean, if everyone thought like that you wouldn’t get any innovation at all.’

  Martin said, ‘Fair enough. But it seems to me getting better at things technologically doesn’t always leave you better off.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘people have spent a lot of time arguing about that.’

  ‘I don’t feel well off with glossy cookers and hoovers and whatnot,’ said Beth. ‘Not that I’ve ever had them, really.’ She shifted the baby onto the other hip and wiped its nose.

  ‘It depends what you want, I suppose,’ said Kate. She sounded curt; her blotched neck betrayed, to Tom, her anguish. He thought, in irritation and in pity, she stands there, dedicated to the belief that you can put the past safely away in a glass case and have a look at it when you feel like. And all the time she wears her own like an albatross. I’ve never known anyone so branded by upbringing. He said to the Lakers, ‘Well, are we going down to that nice river of yours?’

  She had tried, he later supposed. To the best of her ability. Awkwardly, she had played with the children. She had read Jessie a story, embarrassed by the text, reading too fast. They had slept, that night, on the sitting room couch together, rather cramped. He had woken once to feel Kate staring into the darkness and guessed, despite her denials, that she had spent a more or less sleepless night. Jessie, in the morning, had arrived to inspect them. She said cosily, to Kate, ‘I saw him with nothing on. Almost nothing on. Just his pants.’ Kate said, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you want to see me stand on my hands?’

  ‘Yes, I’d love to.’

  ‘I don’t really want to,’ said Jessie. She added reprovingly, ‘Anyway you shouldn’t ask me to when I’ve just had my breakfast, it might make me be sick.’ She squatted on the floor, sucking her knee, and watched them speculatively until Kate, clutching her coat around her, went upstairs to wash.

  And, driving back to London that Sunday evening, they had said little. Kate had driven too fast, hunched forward to peer through the dark fan made by the windscreen wiper. ‘Good thing the rain kept off till now,’ Tom said. ‘We wouldn’t have got that walk in. Nice place, isn’t it – bar the aeroplanes?’ ‘Yes, very nice. By the way I forgot – did you find the stuff you wanted in the Bodleian?’

  I love you, she thought, I do love you so. And I am so frightened of what might happen.

  Chapter Six

  ‘I am thinking,’ Laura said to Nellie, ‘of running a little Arts Festival with Barbara Hamilton later this year. Or next.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Centred on the three villages, we thought. Exhibitions in the churches, and some musical evenings – Barbara knows Yehudi Menuhin quite well and she thinks she might be able to persuade him to come.’

  ‘The villages will enjoy Yehudi Menuhin,’ said Nellie.

  ‘Well, yes – but it will be mainly for visitors, of course, we feel sure we could draw quite a lot of people. It may mean marquees and things, the village halls mightn’t be able to cope. And then on the painting side I thought of doing a Paul Nash exhibition, one could try to borrow some of the wartime paintings, make it a sort of little retrospective show.’

  ‘Well, that will keep you very busy.’

  ‘Oh, I shall be terribly busy. But we feel it would be such a worthwhile thing to do.’

  They were driving to Swindon, for Nellie’s check-up at the hospital. The wheelchair, folded, rattled from time to time in the back of the
Renault. Laura drove fast, but competently; she drove better than Kate; it often surprised Nellie that Laura drove well. You would not have expected it. She also was unmoved by domestic disaster, such as floods or blown fuses, and would be practical and efficient. Blood and guts did not worry her, either; once, years ago, she had done the necessary, immediate things at the scene of an unpleasant road accident, while Hugh had sat white-faced with his head between his knees. Afterwards, she had been annoyed because it had made them late for an engagement.

  Nellie, sitting beside her now, longed suddenly to drive herself; she had liked driving; one was always popping about the place, time was, in the old Ford Popular and then the Morris and finally the Volkswagen. This won’t do, she told herself, what is driving, after all?

  Look at those trees against the skyline. I had forgotten how, on this particular stretch of road, the downs fold into themselves, on and on, green against fawn against gold; the fields apple-green, looking as though they had been combed; cottages tucked down into the ground; everything growing. The smell of it.

  Laura said, ‘We should be just about right for time. I hope he doesn’t keep us hanging about again, Dr Williams. I’ll get one of the porters to come and give us a hand when we get there.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘It’s what they’re there for,’ said Laura crossly. I wish Nellie would be private, she thought, not the beastly National Health. I’m sure she could afford it, really, she just is so obstinate about it. That waiting room place is loathsome, all those people bundled in coats smelling of rain, children tripping over your feet. Awful torn magazines about car racing and cookery.

  I don’t mind being kept waiting, Nellie thought, in fact I have to admit that I hope we are. I like looking at people. Listening. I had no idea one would ever come to find the comings and goings of a hospital waiting room enthralling. As good as the telly. Better, being real life.