The Road to Lichfield

  ‘You should take some time off— get away somewhere.’

  ‘I might do just that.’

  She said, ‘I’ve been thinking of going to see this Mrs Barron person.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I just feel I want to make some kind of contact. I mean, we’ve been connected all our lives in an eerie sort of way, without ever having met.’

  ‘It’s a funny sort of connection.’

  ‘It certainly is. It’s this business of her having known a whole part of father that we didn’t.’

  ‘You want to talk to her about father?’

  ‘I’m not even sure that it’s that, exactly.’

  They were following the track now along a ridge; Berkshire lay spread out below them in filmy sunlight; the chimneys of Didcot power station rose cathedral-like in the distance.

  She said, ‘Do you imagine they were unhappy together, mother and father?’

  ‘Hard to tell, isn’t it? It didn’t exactly seem so, did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ said Graham. ‘If it was some script for a play and you found this chap had had someone else on the side for years and years, well, you’d be in the thick of your marital strife stuff, repression and suppression and whatnot. But this is real life, which I’ve come to think is different. Sometimes I thank heaven for the conventions of drama. You know where you are with a properly set-up dramatic situation, and a good script-writer who knows his job when it comes to characterization, motivation and so on. But this foxes me somewhat, I must admit. No, I don’t really think they were miserable together, or anything near it.’

  ‘Why did you never tell me?’

  ‘It honestly never really occurred to me to, Annie. Good thing I didn’t, as far as I can see. It seems to have got you properly worked up.’

  ‘Not really worked up. Just muddled.’

  They stopped at a gateway into a field and leaned against it. ‘He must always have known mother might find out,’ Anne said. ‘And yet father was never a person who took risks, or at least I didn’t think he was. But he did. So it’s all very confusing. I rang the nursing-home on Friday – he’s still much the same. No more of these comas, so far. They’d been getting him out of bed again.’

  In the distance a tractor crawled across the field and from the creamy spread of plough lapwings suddenly lifted, their cries loud in the stillness.

  ‘Anne?’

  ‘What? Sorry.’

  ‘I said are you sure it isn’t getting a bit much for you, all this popping up and down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We could do it turn and turn about, a bit more. I’m not that pushed just at the moment.’

  ‘It’s all right, honestly.’

  ‘Of course,’ Graham said, ‘you’ve got this fellow of yours to keep you amused up there, that schoolmaster.’

  She turned on him. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a joke. Christ, Annie, you look just like when you were sixteen and I used to pull your leg.’

  There was a silence. ‘Cigarette?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Just a joke, I swear. I don’t know what made me think of him – just something about the way he asked after you when I was in with Dad one time he turned up at the nursing-home. Sorry, Anne – I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘so what, then? The best of luck to you. Have a good time and don’t look so screwed-up about it. It’s a common enough occurrence, after all. Do you good. Damn – I’m almost out of matches. I don’t suppose you’ve got any?’ Turning to look at her, he stopped.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Annie – look, I’m sorry. I really did just mean a joke. It’s a bit sour, I see now.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  They stood side by side, elbows on the gate; an aeroplane drew a thin white line across the sky, from west to east. ‘Shall we go on?’ she said. ‘There’s a track across here we can take.’ They walked in silence for a while.

  ‘You’ve surprised me somewhat, Annie.’

  She said, suddenly irritable. ‘Why? I’m younger than you are. It’s a bit of a shock to me, too, though. It’s a process I’d rather forgotten about. I daresay it happens to you all the time.’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘What about all those ladies, then?’

  ‘They’re just ladies,’ he said. ‘If you’re talking about what I think you are, then that’s something I don’t know much about these days. Haven’t for a long time.’

  ‘Oh, Graham …’

  ‘So what now? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ she said, ‘the faintest idea. Let’s not talk about it any more. Forget about it, Graham – I mean that. Look – if we cut across that field there it comes out in the village and we can get you some matches.’

  When I was fourteen, she thought, I hated you for a whole year on end, bar seasonal truces for Christmas and birthdays and those were pretty frail. You pulled my leg, as you put it, first because I had grown a bosom and then because according to you it was inadequate. You hung my bra out of the front window where it was seen, before I retrieved it, by the boy opposite at whom I could not look without risk of heart failure. You brought your friends to the house and with them made remarks of incomprehensible indelicacy at which I giggled, for fear of appearing innocent. You played elaborate practical jokes on me, borrowed my records and returned them scratched or not at all, caught me shaving my armpits with father’s razor and told him, called me ‘Fatso’ and threw cold water on all my aspirations. Or so it seemed at the time. I daresay you would have a different tale to tell.

  And now, for no reason that I can see except the passage of twenty-five years, I become increasingly fond of you and more tolerant of all those things about you that have from time to time exasperated me. You are getting a paunch and have gone thin on top and I think you are lonely, which causes me the most peculiar and confusing kind of pain. I am sorry for you. And to feel sorry for people is to feel guilty because things are not for you as they are for them. Not complacent, guilty.

  Nine

  ‘But if as you said yesterday he hardly knows what’s going on now it can’t make any difference whether you go up before the weekend or after.’

  ‘I told them at the nursing-home I’d be up on Friday.’

  ‘Then tell them you can’t.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘All right if you insist. I must say there’s nothing I want to do less than have dinner with the Thwaiteses. Why can’t they make it a different day?’

  ‘They’ve got other people coming.’

  ‘He’s a bore, Jim Thwaites. A complacent bore.’

  ‘He’s my partner, may I remind you.’

  ‘You’re welcome to him.’

  Don picked up his brief-case and walked out of the room. At the door he turned and said ‘I can tell Jim we’ll be there, then?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  We’ve had a quarrel, she thought. Goodness. When did that last happen? I’m sorry, she said to Don’s departing back, I’m sorry about that because I was unreasonable and you are perfectly right, my father is far beyond knowing Friday from Monday or indeed one day from another.

  She stood in the hall looking at the telephone and turned to find Paul leaned up against the kitchen door, watching her.

  ‘For heavens’ sake! You made me jump. What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing. Why do you keep picking the phone up and putting it down again?’

  ‘I’m not. I’ve forgotten someone’s number, that’s all. Hadn’t you better get off to school?’

  ‘I’m on my way. Keep your hair on, Mum.’

  She got the number through directory enquiries, walked to and fro between kitchen and hall for ten minutes, and then dialled it. A secretarial voice said distantly, ‘The Headmaster isn’t here just now. What nam
e is it, please?’ ‘Could you tell him that Mrs Linton rang to say that unfortunately she won’t be able to be in Lichfield till next Monday.’ ‘Mrs Linden?’ ‘Linton.’ ‘Would you like him to ring you back, Mrs Linton?’ ‘No’ Anne said, panic-stricken. ‘No, there’s no need.’ Putting the receiver down she found herself trembling.

  Five minutes later she went to the telephone again. ‘Don?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Sorry, is it a bad moment?’ ‘I’ve got a client coming any minute. What is it, Anne?’ ‘I’m sorry about just now. The Thwaiteses. It doesn’t really matter if I don’t go to Lichfield till Monday.’

  Don’s voice, muffled, talking to someone else said, ‘Leave the file out, would you, Mandy – I’ll be wanting it in a minute.’ Clear again, and to her, he went on ‘Right. Fine. Seven-thirty, Jim says. Anything else?’ ‘No, nothing. What time will you be back?’ ‘The usual time, why?’ ‘Well, I thought it might be nice if we went out for a drink or something – if it’s a nice evening.’ ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘We’ll see. I’ve got some papers I must go over.’ ‘Don …’ ‘Look, I am in the middle of something, actually. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘’Bye then.’

  It was May. The garden was encircled now by bolsters of green where, two months ago, the street and houses opposite had been visible through the twiggy screen of the hedges. Subtract two months, the inflation and deflation of two moons, the growth of much grass and leaf, and the clocking up of some nine hundred odd miles on the dashboard of the car, and you were back in March, with nothing more disturbing on the horizon than the odd decision to be made about Paul’s schooling, and whether or not to apply for some O-level examining this summer. Father was, apparently, well and happy in Starbridge; you were reasonably clear of your position on a good many things, including the extent to which people are in every way sustained and supported by the past; there was nothing you particularly wanted, and nothing you particularly regretted.

  She went up into the spare room, later in the day, and began to disembowel cupboards. Judy came and sprawled on the bed, watching her, her skimpy school tunic barely covering her thighs, her school tie unknotted and its ends crammed into her blouse. Anne said, ‘Why don’t you take off those awful things? Look, there’s a shirt of mine here I never wear – it’s pretty – would you like it?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Why not? It would fit you – you’re as tall as I am, almost. Try it on. Darling, don’t put your feet on that bedcover.’

  ‘Why are you chucking out all that stuff? You never tidy things up – I bet you’ve not opened that cupboard for years. Is someone coming to stay?’

  ‘No. I just thought I’d have a clear out.’ And I have to have something to do, rather than think, or remember, or face the fact that today Tuesday is removed from Monday of next week by five days. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Help me take this lot down to the dustbin, and then I’m going to make a terribly complicated cake. Do you want to help? You used to like doing that. But put something else on – you don’t need to wear school things at home.’

  ‘It isn’t worth it,’ said Judy, ‘What’s the point?’

  Don read through the Styles v. Jackson Construction Co. papers and thought (while noting that there were one or two tricky points in the case that would want watching) that Anne was being a bit trying these days. He didn’t in fact find these trips up to Lichfield particularly inconvenient, and quite appreciated the need for her to go, which made this business tonight somewhat irritating. One would almost have thought that she wanted to be told to go more infrequently, or not at all – sitting there in that pub on the edge, it had seemed, of tears. Good heavens, Anne, he’d said reasonably, it’s really neither here nor there to me, I’m awfully busy these days. Come on – I must get back now.

  It hadn’t seemed the moment to bring up that house he’d heard of in Wallingford, with the garden going down to the river. It might take time, getting her round to the idea of a move, let alone enthusiastic. One should be thankful, presumably, and indeed one was, not to be married to someone extravagant, or demanding of expensive holidays or objects. Oh, he thought, I’ll get her round to it, with a bit of time and tact.

  In the Thwaites’ drawing-room the shine of the parquet was interrupted here and there by oriental rugs, deep red and prussian blue, balding a little in the centres. Massive sofas and armchairs of the nineteen thirties were moored at the edges of the room, each with its attendant small antique table for glass, or cup, or ashtray. Anne put her sherry down carefully and listened to Joan Thwaites tell her about her granddaughter’s equestrian triumphs and the fortnight they had had in Greece, and the forthcoming R.D.C. elections. Yes, she said, did she really? no, I hadn’t heard that; I don’t think actually I’ve met him. Released by Joan Thwaites (rising now to greet new arrivals, and dealing them around the room, planting out her guests by fireplace or window) she studied without seeing it the Leader above the mantelpiece and observed without noticing that the Lalique bowl on the table beside her had a minute flaw in its rim. She took another sip of sherry and travelled to Lichfield and back, turned with an attentive smile to the neighbour on her right and composed, as he spoke, a letter of grief and culmination, tore it up, and allowed herself to be conveyed from drawing-room to dining-room and installed on one of eight (reproduction) Chippendale chairs at a diagonal slant from Don, taking his turn now beside Joan Thwaites. She ate an admirable cold consommé and heard from Jim Thwaites about the weather in the Peloponnese in April and the rapacity of Greek hoteliers. The woman opposite (sixtyish, determinedly spry and vivacious) said ‘How I do envy you, Jim, it’s five years and more since I managed Greece.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ he said, ‘as far as I’m concerned, as a classicist, it’s a bit of an infatuation. I suppose I first went, as an undergraduate, back in – dear me, in around 1935. Do you know Greece at all well, Anne?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ said the woman, ‘what a treat to come.’ She picked up a fork, tidied the salmon and salad on her plate, and smiled kindly at Anne.

  ‘You’d get so much out of it,’ said Jim Thwaites. ‘We must see that Don takes you before too long. Anne teaches history, you know. At – at the comprehensive, is that it?’

  ‘Now that must be so interesting.’

  Anne said, ‘I did. I’ve lost my job, as it happens.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Jim. ‘Presumably you’ll pick something else up easily enough? Now Sybil here writes.’

  The woman dipped her head modestly towards her plate.

  Anne said, ‘What do you write?’ On the wall opposite a selection of English cathedrals, reduced and framed in gilt, offered themselves unobtrusively above the sideboard (pudding plates laid out ready, and glass dish of wafer biscuits); the third from the left, almost certainly, was Gloucester. At the other end of the table Don was discussing, it seemed, local politics with Joan Thwaites.

  ‘Sybil does the most charming travel pieces for The Countryman,’ said Jim.

  ‘Actually rather more for Country Life now,’ she broke in. ‘And Vogue. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Is that so? I very much liked that article Joan showed me on these archaeological tours in the eastern Med. That really whetted one’s appetite, I must say.’

  ‘They are most awfully good value. Archaeology, of course,’ she smiled again across at Anne, ‘is rather a pet interest of mine. I’ve got a treat coming up next month – I’m getting to Ephesus for the first time, which has always been a bit of a lifetime’s ambition.’

  ‘Ah’ said Jim Thwaites ‘We shall want to hear all about that, Sybil. You’re one up on me there, I must say.’

  ‘But you’ve done Knossos, Jim, haven’t you?’

  ‘We have indeed. Marvellous experience.’

  ’Of course,’ said Sybil, ‘these places aren’t what they were, in this day and age of the package tour. Before the war, one really had that sense of somewhere absolutely untouched for thousands
of years, and the people were so unspoilt. I dug,’ she offered to Anne, across Jim Thwaites’s approving attention, ‘in Palestine as a girl. One of the Dead Sea sites.’

  Anne said, ‘That must have been interesting.’

  ‘It was incredible. I can smell it now – the heat, you know, and that extraordinary middle-eastern feeling, there’s nothing like it.’

  The Thwaiteses’ gilt wall clock, with palest of chimes, announced nine o’clock. Removed from eleven by two hours and from next week by uncountable hundreds. Anne said, ‘Don and I were at Belas Knap last month.’

  After a fractional pause Jim Thwaites said, ‘Let me see now, I should know … Turkey, is that?’

  ‘In the Cotswolds. Near Winchcombe. It’s a neolithic long barrow.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m frightfully ignorant about English archaeology,’ said Sybil. ‘It never seems quite the same, does it?’ She laughed. ‘Dear me, we did go to Fishbourne a few years ago, I remember – all those poor souls trenching in the mud, one really had to take off one’s hat to them.’

  ‘And a few miles from here,’ Anne said, ‘on the Downs, there’s an earthwork that goes for about four or five miles – you can follow it on the ground, apparently it’s thought to be a celtic estate boundary. And then of course there’s the Ridgeway itself, and Uffington. I don’t care for the very done-up Roman places, myself, like Chedworth, but I think North Leigh has a lot to be said for it. And then there are the Rollright Stones.’

  ‘One really must,’ said Jim Thwaites, ‘make an effort and take in what is on one’s own doorstep. Mustn’t we, Sybil?’

  ‘If it wasn’t for the wretched climate …’

  ‘If only, as you say, there wasn’t the wretched climate to take the edge off things.’

  From the end of the table, handing out lemon mousses, Joan Thwaites said ‘I saw your picture in the paper, Anne. Demonstrating about that cottage.’

  Ah. Yes. Lined up with Sandra, the Pickerings, et al. Wearing trousers and warm jersey, scarf round head, expression made the more inscrutable by fuzzy grey newsprint; a concerned and responsible person, doing what she thought proper about something that mattered.