Susan. Who is both now and then. Who is both the cool and distant Susan with whom he exchanges brief and necessary words on the telephone or over Jane’s head, and the lost and vanished Susan whom once he loved to distraction. In his bleakest moments, these days, it seemed to him that the death of feeling is more hideous even than the death of persons. He could cope better, he thought, with a Susan who had died, loved and loving, than a Susan who had survived the extinction of his love, and of hers. Forever, now, there would be superimposed upon the Susan he saw and spoke to that smiling, intimate shadow-Susan of another time. She came to him in his dreams. She arrived suddenly in his head as he worked, and said something she had said ten years ago. Most painful of all, she looked at him, for a split second, out of Jane’s eyes. He saw her in the tilt of Jane’s mouth, in the curl of Jane’s nostril.
‘Can I have a Cornetto?’ says Jane.
‘Not on the boat and at Greenwich. One or the other.’
She pulls a face, and settles finally for anticipation. They install themselves on the top deck, for the better view. Jane keeps wanting to move to a yet more advantageous position until eventually Matthew calls a halt. They agree on the left-hand side (‘Port,’ says Matthew, ‘we’re at sea.’ ‘At river,’ corrects Jane) and admire Boadicea, with her rearing black horses alongside Westminster Bridge. Jane wants to know why there aren’t any other boats, and indeed it is true, the river flows wide and empty save for a busybody police vessel buzzing to and fro and some sleek capsule purring off to the City Airport. The only vessels moored to the banks are, it seems, nightclubs or restaurants. ‘That’s not proper boats,’ says Jane, disgusted. But presently there are gulls, and interesting refuse in the water and the archaic splendour of Billingsgate fish market. ‘Fish! Yuck!’ says Jane. ‘I don’t like fish. Not even fish fingers, any more.’ And the castle fantasy of Tower Bridge and soon the delicate forestry of cranes that marks the Isle of Dogs. Jane kneels up on her chair, her nose to the glass. She is wearing blue denim dungarees, sweater, anorak, and new green trainers of which she is inordinately proud. Her fair hair is scraped back into a ponytail from which tendrils constantly escape to curl against her neck. Matthew finds these peculiarly disarming; observing them, covertly, he can experience an almost unendurable wash of tenderness. The ponytail is held by a pink plastic clip which Jane persuaded him to buy a couple of weeks ago. Susan, he has learned, detests the clip; nevertheless, Jane is wearing it. He decides not to ponder the significance of this.
The boat is crowded with tourists, both foreign and indigenous. The skipper – or someone – gives a commentary over the tannoy as they go. They are told about St Katharine Dock and about St Mary’s Rotherhithe, where the captain of the Mayflower lies buried. The commentary is laced with the occasional pungent joke. The pound coin is usually called a Thatcher because it’s thick, brassy and thinks it’s a sovereign. The American tourists titter but are patently embarrassed. Are they disturbed by the irreverence or afraid to give offence by conniving at it? ‘Is that funny?’ enquires Jane. ‘Actually, it is quite,’ says Matthew.
They have rounded the curve of the Isle of Dogs. Matthew is able to pick out, in the far distance, the blue patchwork glitter of the Blackwall building. Jane is impressed. She thinks it would be more striking yet if the glass were pink. ‘We’ll bear it in mind for next time,’ says Matthew.
She yawns. ‘What are we going to do when we get to Greenwich?’
‘We’re going first to the big museum there so that I can find a picture of a ship.’
‘One like this?’
‘Certainly not,’ says Matthew. ‘A real ship. An old-fashioned ship with sails.’
‘What for?’
‘Because when I’ve found the right one I’m going to ask someone I know about to make another picture of it in glass. That’s called a glass engraving. And it’s going to go over the front door of the blue glass building.’
‘Why?’
‘Because more than four hundred years ago a man called Martin Frobisher sailed from just about where the building is to the Arctic in a ship like that.’
‘There are whales at the Arctic,’ says Jane.
‘There are indeed. And seals and polar bears.’
‘It’s cruel to kill whales,’ says Jane, a child of her time. ‘Did he kill whales?’
‘I don’t think so. He went there when there were no maps and nobody really knew what there was there. It was all ice and snow.’
‘Can I have the Cornetto before the museum?’ says Jane.
‘Probably. I’m telling you interesting things,’ Matthew admonishes. ‘I’m telling you about this man Martin Frobisher sailing to the Arctic.’
‘Why did he?’ says Jane, scribbling with her finger in a puddle of spilled drink upon the table.
‘Because he thought there was gold there, partly. Because he wanted to get rich.’
‘Why?’ drones Jane.
‘You may well ask. Because there are always people who want to get rich. Because a lot of other people egged him on, so that they could get rich too.’
But Jane has lost interest. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I’m drawing a ship. These are the sails.’ Matthew is left alone with Martin Frobisher and the Arctic, here, there, and four hundred and thirteen years ago.
Martin Furbissher, Ffourbyssher, Frobusher. Write it as you will – but he will leave it here, tacked forever to this inhospitable place, to this treacherous sheet of water. Frobisshers Streights; West Ingland; Cape Walsingham. In the meantime … Where are the stars? he cries. He howls to the shuttered skies, the blank and freezing skies that offer not a spark, not a glimmer, no Orion nor Cassiopeia. No Arcturus. No Polaris. The ship spins, becalmed, adrift in a featureless sphere. There is up and there is down; there is north and south and east and west. But there is no here, and no there; they are untethered. Where are the stars?
‘We’re there,’ says Jane. ‘Come on. First we’ll find the Cornetto and then we’ll go to the museum and find your boat. Right?’ She slips her hand into his, ingratiating. When they are ashore she skips, charged with life. She comes to a sudden halt. ‘I’ve got a loose tooth,’ she says. ‘Feel.’ She yanks down a lip, offers a rose pink gum. ‘Later,’ says Matthew. She points: ‘There’s a ship. A real one. Is that like you want?’ He replies that no, that is the Cutty Sark, a tea clipper, of another time and place. ‘I like it,’ says Jane.
They achieve the Cornetto. Jane is very silent for quite a while. Then, in the park, she does handstands. She wants Matthew to do handstands. ‘I can’t. I’m too old.’ ‘You did once,’ she protests. ‘On the beach that time.’ And so he did, he recalls; in both their heads is a summer afternoon, in Cornwall, on another plane of existence. A boy with a kite. Dogs skittering in the surf. Susan unpacking a picnic basket. ‘You were only six,’ says Matthew. ‘I’m surprised you remember.’ And she lifts her face to look at him; ‘I remember,’ she says. And he is gripped with unbearable compunction. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘That’s the Observatory up there. They have telescopes and things. We’ll go there after the museum, if there’s time.’
Meta Incognita. Out there somewhere in that white fog. Incognita indeed. The frozen shores that are paved with gold, which by God’s will and pleasure will enrich the nation, Her Majesty and Martin Frobisher. The road to Cathay. Which he will seek out in due course, Martin Frobisher, Admiral of Cathay. But first to make landfall in this hellish Ultima Thule, where the men’s hands freeze to the rigging, where great islands of ice surge from the white walls within which the vessel spins, and rush down upon it. Where the waters run with fish, and great whales swim. Where the wind roars and snow falls and this, by God, is summer. No man but a fool would come here, unless it were for fame or fortune.
Fifteen ships. The Thomas Allen, the Judith, the Thomas of Ipswich, the Dennis, the Buss of Bridgewater. Their crews: men, boys. A great carte of navigation at a cost of £5. A great map of Mercator in print. Six cartes of navigation written in black parchment
whereof four ruled plain and two round. A cosmographical glass. Twenty compasses of divers sorts. An astrolabum.
‘You’re not listening,’ she cries. ‘I said what’s that thing for?’ She breathes on the glass case, draws a J for Jane in the fog she has made.
‘It’s an instrument people used to use at sea for finding which direction to go by measuring the position of the sun or the stars.’
Jane sighs, massively. ‘I’m feeling just a little bit sick.’
‘I told you a second helping of chips wouldn’t be a good idea,’ says Matthew.
‘Not very sick. Shall we go into the park again? You said you thought there were swings somewhere.’
‘In a minute,’ says Matthew. ‘I want to look round here a bit.’
‘Why do you?’
‘Because it’s interesting.’ There is an edge to Matthew’s voice. Jane trails behind him. She scuffs her new trainers on the floor. She swings on a guard rail. ‘I don’t think you should do that,’ says Matthew. ‘The attendant’s watching you.’ Jane subsides. She falls in beside her father, a wary eye on the attendant. ‘Look,’ says Matthew. ‘This is a map of the stars. They have names – they’ve had the same names for hundreds of years. That’s Sirius, and that’s Polaris, the North Star, and that’s Betelgeuse.’
‘Beetle juice,’ says Jane. ‘Silly.’ She is on the brink of a sulk.
Matthew puts a hand on her shoulder. She makes a half-hearted attempt to shake it off. ‘Astronomers used to arrange them into patterns, called constellations, and they have names too. There’s Orion – the Hunter – and the Plough, which some people call the Great Bear.’
‘It isn’t a bit like a bear.’
‘In America they call it the Big Dipper. A saucepan. It does look more like a saucepan.’
‘How can they have got it in America too?’ she asks, after a moment. And Matthew, rewarded, explains. At too great length, losing her, so that she drifts off to exchange furtive stares with a child her own age, at the far end of the room, leaving him once more to the inconsequential sequences of his own mind, to an afternoon on a beach in Cornwall, to the terrifying certainty of the stars.
An instrument of brass named Sphera Nautica at four pounds six shillings and eightpence. A ring of brass, annulus Astronomica. Medicines; viz. Ambra grisi Oriental, Rubarbi agavise, Turpenti, Calan aromatica … A sea card.
The sea card over which he pores in the tossing stinking cabin, amid the groan of timbers cut in Hampshire, to the flicker of a lantern made in Bow, all suspended here at God knows where. He needs the latitude; he needs a coast. The sea card is a spider web of lines (etched upon the skin of a sheep that once grazed the Berkshire Downs), crisscrossing a waste on which are scrawled, here and there, the uncertain black fringes of coasts that may or may not exist. The sea card is a talisman, a hostage to fortune, a siren voice. He will leave his own mark upon that void, God willing, his own black scribbles to fill in the empty quarter of the globe.
Order and disorder. The order of the heavens, of the points of the compass, of the laws of navigation. The disorder of the world, which is made of wind and rain, rock and water, snow, ice and fog. Which is made of worm-eaten timbers, snapping sails, hemp and iron. Of seals and white bears, sea-mews, gulls, porpoises. Of foul-mouthed unquenchable seamen, raw brash boys and his own uncertain temper which surges now as he pounds up on deck to survey the awful blank yet again.
And sees beyond and behind the fog a glow, a glimmer, as of the risen Christ. The sun.
‘What time is it?’ she asks.
‘Nearly five. There’s a boat at half past – we’d better get that one.’
‘Why are days different?’ Jane enquires after a moment.
‘In what way different?’
‘Some days are long days and some days are short days. This is a short day.’
‘Ah,’ says Matthew. ‘I see what you mean. I suppose it’s that when you’re busy, or enjoying yourself, time goes more quickly.’
There is a further reflective pause. ‘Where does it go?’ continues Jane.
‘Ah.’ Now it is Matthew who is silent. They are walking beside the river. He looks at the slow swollen flow of the water, at the glitter of the Isle of Dogs beyond. He sees, and also thinks. ‘Well,’ he says eventually, ‘I suppose there’s a sense in which it doesn’t go at all. Things that have happened are always there, so long as someone knows about them.’
‘But where do hours go?’ Jane persists. ‘And minutes? There’s sixty minutes in an hour. And sixty seconds in a minute.’
‘Do you really want to know?’ says Matthew, halting.
Jane, too, halts. ‘Yes.’
‘If you’re wearing a watch they keep coming out all the time, rather like seeds, and they collect under the glass … if you look carefully you can just see them … Can you?’ He extends his wrist and Jane peers intently at his watch. ‘And then every so often you have to clean them out. Once a week or so. The same with clocks. And of course the bigger the clock the more of a business it is. They have an awful job with Big Ben. They send men up with buckets, on the first of January every year.’
Jane continues to stare into the watch. ‘I can’t see them.’
‘Dear me,’ says Matthew. ‘Perhaps you need glasses. We shall have to fix up an eye test. I can see them perfectly well – those little green specks.’
Jane looks up at him. Her expression changes. ‘It’s not true,’ she yells. ‘You’re teasing me.’ And she flings herself at him, butting him in the stomach, her giggles are tinged with anger, they skirmish on the riverside until he lets her push him over and roll him on a patch of grass.
He gets up, hauls her to her feet. ‘We’re making an exhibition of ourselves,’ he says. ‘And we’re going to miss the boat.’
They inhabit time and space. Within the vessel, the hourglass measures out the day, charts the watches, imposes a frail order. Beyond is the space over which they have no control, which shrinks to a wall of fog or comes swirling upon them in cliffs of ice. It is as though these roaring black waters were scattered with great fallen pieces of the moon. He clutches the deck rail and stares now upon one such, sees in its glassy surface caverns and grottoes, caught by the setting sun, flaming with rose and gold. He is wild with sleeplessness, with the awe and horror of the place. He wipes a hand across his face, the ice flames again and now he sees castles, ramparts, pinnacles, and spires. He sees a golden tower, the tower of a cathedral, and is transported, is flown across the globe. He sees the towers of St Paul’s, glowing in the evening sunlight beside the river. The world shrinks, within his head, time and space collide. And then the wind shifts, the sails crack and he goes running for the wheelhouse.
Four
A cathedral in the ice; a city of the mind. We are hosts to the physical world, the transient purveyors of sequence upon sequence of references. Language sleeps upon the tongue, mutates through generations, survives us all. We see the world, invest what we see with meaning, and send images sifting down from one head to another – a serpent, a lamb, a fish, a cluster of leaves. Sundials and stars and the death’s head. The favoured shapes and signs; the archetypes; the things that stalk our dreams. Eagles, gryphons, dragons, lions. Horses. From the caves of Lascaux, from the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, on Celtic brooches and the Bayeux tapestry and by the hands of Uccello and Leonardo and Velázquez and Van Dyke, on to shiny Stubbs thoroughbreds and eventually to the gilt-framed red horses from Boots that hang in the hall of Matthew’s parents’ house. A picture of a horse always goes down well.
‘I want you to dust the top of the picture for me, Matthew,’ says his mother. ‘I can’t get up there any more.’ And so, the good son, he gets out the stepladder and wipes a duster across the frame. His mother, from below, directs the operation. When he is through, and down again, she gives him a rewarding pat upon the arm. He waits for her to say ‘good boy’, but she does not. Instead she gives him a glance of roguish triumph; she knew what he was expecting.
She can still be one step ahead, his mother.
Her hair is white. Her body, always spare, seems to have withered – there is less of her each year, he feels. But she herself – the voice, the soul – has sharpened. She is a network of opinion, still, but the opinions have blossomed or have faded, have responded to circumstance. Old ones have been adjusted; new ones have been honed and polished. She can surprise. Two weeks ago she asked Matthew if he had a lady friend these days. Matthew, taken aback, equivocated. ‘I’m asking,’ said his mother, ‘not because I’m wanting to see you marrying again, unless it arises, but because a man like you shouldn’t be on his own, it’s not natural.’ She meant, he perceived, a man like you should not be without a sexual life; but it was he who was embarrassed, not she. She looked him squarely in the eye, and he mumbled that there was someone he saw from time to time. ‘I’m glad to hear it, then,’ said his mother.
She thinks a woman is entitled to the same pay as a man, job for job. If she hears a child use bad language she will threaten to rinse its mouth out with soap. She likes television game shows and detests American serials. She favours the ecumenical movement and environmental campaigners and old-fashioned Tory politicians (she considers the new lot jumped-up nobodies). She would have terrorists hanged, but welcomes abortion reform. She relishes a meal in an Indian restaurant and allowed Matthew to fly her to Paris for her seventieth birthday treat. She mourns her husband with stoical reticence and has booked the plot alongside him in the cemetery she visits each Sunday morning.
They stand in front of the picture, Matthew still holding the duster. ‘Give me that,’ says his mother. ‘I’ve half a mind to send those horses to the church jumble, anyway.’
Matthew looks at her in astonishment. The red horses from Boots have hung there since the day they moved into the house, since a time when his head barely reached above the oak settle below them, since the beginning of recorded history. ‘Why?’