Nick says to Mary Chambers “I’m not sure that I should go on being at Framleigh.” When Mary does not reply he adds, gingerly “What do you think?”
“What would you do if you weren’t?”
“I suppose,” says Nick, “I’d get down properly to finding a job and somewhere of my own to live.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Nick hesitates. “I think it’s what I’d want to do if I hadn’t met Toby.”
“Then,” says Mary, “I think you should probably get on and do it.”
Later still, Mary comes across Jason asleep in a heap of Paula’s ethnic cushions. She and Nick together carry him up to his room and put him into bed. Mary wipes his face and hands with a damp flannel and Jason, dreaming that a bear is licking him, feebly protests. He rolls over onto his stomach, crossly grunting; they leave him.
The Rover turns out of the Framleigh gates onto the road. The village is respectably asleep, as well it might be. Lowther too could do with his bed, as it happens. Sir Henry, on the other hand, is alert and in full constructive conversational flow. For a man of sixty-three he has remarkable energy; that is one of the reasons he is chairman of an international banking corporation.
“… Of course Jacobson will have to look carefully into the costing … Run as a tax loss … Purely a prestige venture … Various members of the board will be out of sympathy, but we can talk them round, John, eh? Standish will have to be made to see sense about the asking price. Odd fellow, Standish. A bit seedy, to my mind. Still – he seems very much the guiding light, and the rest of the outfit I rather took to. Mind, one would set certain conditions from the outset. The staffing must remain much as it is. The young chap seemed a bit of a light-weight, I thought, just some art college johnnie, but the others we’d want to hang on to. That American fellow – I like Americans. And the potter – what was he called? Bill, Bob … amusing chap. And of course Mrs Standish is essential. Very talented woman, John, very talented indeed …”
Toby looks round Paula’s door. “May I come in?”
Paula is in bed. She looks over the sheet with suspicion. “I’m going to sleep. I’m shagged out, frankly.”
Toby sits on the edge of the bed. “So am I. The courses are so exhausting.” He lays a hand on the ridge of bedclothes that is Paula’s thigh. “We ought to have more time to ourselves.”
Paula stares at him in amazement. She says, warily “Why?”
Toby frowns. “One gets so involved … There are so many demands on one … The important things in life tend to get, well, pushed aside.”
Paula studies him. She does not move her thigh. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” says Toby, “I just wanted to see you.”
“You’ll be saying next,” says Paula with suspicion, “that you love me.”
Toby, who had not been going to go as far as that, smiles: a warm, confiding smile. He massages, gently, the thigh. “That’s silly, Paula. Do I need to? Incidentally, there are one or two things I’d rather like to have a talk about.”
“What sort of things?”
“Just,” says Toby, “administrative things. Framleigh and so forth. In the morning will do.” He moves his hand to the dip between Paula’s legs.
“Oh,” says Paula. She lies there, not moving. Someone walks past the door. Greg, maybe. Or Nick.
Toby and Paula observe one another for a few moments, in silence. Paula seems about to say something and then doesn’t. Toby runs his other hand through his thinning hair, in that characteristic gesture.
Paula, suddenly, pulls back the bedclothes. “Oh, all right, then. Come on.”
Chapter 13
In the marvellous Framleigh morning Jason and Kevin are on the terrace. The early mist is again curling up from the prospect and the trees and a shaft of sunlight has isolated the temple so that it rides the landscape like a vision. No one else is about; the windows of the house are curtained still and within people are either numbly sleeping or waking to headaches, shaggy tongues and mental unease.
Jason says “Go on, then”. He pees into the lily-pond.
Kevin glances up at the windows, and then down at the pond. “I don’t want to,” he says.
“I can do it further than you,” says Jason. “Much further. Look …”
Kevin, stung, unzips his jeans. He looks back again at the windows; down in the village his mother vainly remonstrates. “Mine was furthest,” says Jason. Kevin glares.
An aircraft, bound for Iceland, maybe, or Honolulu, or Nevada, lifts from the American airbase and surges across the horizon.
“In aeroplanes,” says Jason, “when they want to go, the aeroplane people open two holes in the floor, one for men and one for ladies – if it’s raining anyway, otherwise they have to …”
Kevin has been to Torremolinos, with his mum and dad. He knows a thing or two about foreign travel. He interrupts, with sudden authority. “They don’t. That isn’t true, you made that up. You shouldn’t say things that aren’t true.”
Jason ponders. “No,” he agrees, eventually, “but it’s fun.”
“I’m going back to our house,” Kevin announces. “You can come too if you like.”
Jason shakes his head. He has decided, suddenly, to catch some of the wood-lice that live under the stones on the terrace and put them in the lily-pond and see if wood-lice can swim. Kevin goes. Jason squats, turning stones over.
A thrush blandly sings. Combine harvesters crawl tank-like to and fro across the fields. The fighter from the American airbase has reached the Welsh border. Framleigh sheds a few more flakes of stucco and settles to another day.
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First published by William Heinemann Ltd 1982
Published in Penguin Books 1984
Copyright © Penelope Lively, 1982
All rights reserved
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ISBN: 978-0-241-96027-1
Penelope Lively, Next to Nature, Art
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