Laura gives Andrew a smile.
“You look as if you know what you’re doing,” she says. “I’m sure you’re an expert.”
Andrew puts one finger to his lips.
“Ssh! Don’t give me away. I’m here incognito.”
Maggie plays along with the joke.
“Andrew Herrema, the world’s foremost sheep-racing expert.”
Laura laughs. “Are you really called Andrew Herrema?”
“Yes,” says Andrew. “It’s not easy having a name that sounds like a typo.”
“Any relation to Menno Herrema?”
“My uncle,” says Andrew, surprised. “Or he was.”
“Yes,” says Laura. “I heard he’d died.”
So it turns out that Andrew’s uncle was a collector of first editions, and Laura knows all about him.
“He had the best collection of Golden Age detective fiction ever. Where is it now?”
“Well,” says Andrew. He gives a quick glance at Maggie. “I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got it! Are you a collector too?”
“No,” says Andrew. “All that stuff does nothing for me at all. But my uncle cared about it so much.”
Maggie is surprised and puzzled by that look of Andrew’s. There’s something here that he believes affects her. But what?
Henry Broad joins them.
“Guess who’s coming to the garden party?” he says to Laura.
“Nick Griffin of the BNP. I just heard.”
“Oh, Lord!” says Laura. “Will there be demos and so on?”
“I very much hope so,” says Henry.
Laura explains to Maggie and Andrew, looking apologetic.
“We’ve been asked to one of the Buckingham Palace garden parties. God knows why. Ten thousand long-serving counselors and us.”
“And Nick Griffin,” says Henry. “It might even get interesting.”
“Henry,” says Laura, “I want to ask Maggie and Andrew over for dinner.” To Maggie and Andrew, “How about Saturday?”
“Fine with me,” says Andrew.
Before Maggie can qualify this thoughtless response, the sheep race begins. Everyone crowds round the short hurdle-lined track to urge on their favorite. Martin Linton opens the gate and comes out rattling a yellow bucket of sugar beet. The sheep follow. Martin lopes down the track, and the sheep break into a waddle, still packed close together. The crowd starts to shout. The sheep become alarmed, and break into a run. The crowd goes moderately wild. The sheep scramble over the straw bales placed in their way, and so the field spaces out.
“Come on, Lewes Lady!” cry Andrew and Laura.
Lewes Lady does not win. Andrew and Laura share a rueful grin.
“I’m beginning to think you may not be the world’s foremost sheep-racing expert,” Laura says.
“Damn!” says Andrew. “Exposed again.”
“But you’re on for Saturday, then?”
Maggie feels trapped. What on earth was Andrew thinking of, saying, “Fine with me”? But of course he spoke to please. His automatic reflex, which is to be obliging, overrode his common sense. So now, because Andrew is such a sweetheart, because everyone loves Andrew, she will have to be the witch, the bitch, the one who gives offense.
“Let me check my diary when I get home,” she says to Laura. “We’d love to come, I’m just not sure what’s happening next weekend.”
She catches sight of the man in the cream jacket over by the Bonfire Society stall. He has his hand on the arm of the woman beside him, they’re laughing together at something. The sun goes behind a cloud, and all at once it feels cold.
“Let’s go,” Maggie says to Andrew.
Too many dogs and children.
As they head back across the field she says, “I never knew you had an uncle.”
“I hardly knew him. Turns out he left me this collection of books. Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, that sort of stuff. I don’t want it at all, but I feel I should honor his memory or something. Apparently the collection’s worth a lot.”
“Like how much?”
“Maybe sixty or seventy thousand.”
“Good God!”
“I was going to tell you. As a sort of nice surprise.”
Because seventy thousand is house-deposit money. Settling-down money. So I should be grateful and happy. But nowadays we leave it too long. We know each other too well. When the moment comes the excitement’s long gone, and you’re left thinking—is this it? And that means you’re a spoiled bitch. He’s solvent and loyal and kind, what more do you want?
Just—more.
Maggie knows she should ask how it’s a nice surprise, but she can’t. The words won’t come out. A stubbornness has got hold of her and won’t let her go. She feels as if Andrew is making her walk backward into a windowless room, and even his silence, his not-pursuing of the unspoken topic, is herding her through the doorway. Once inside the door will shut and she’ll never be able to get out again.
His mobile rings. He checks the number and takes the call, with a quick shrug of apology. She hears his calm voice reassuring a panicked client.
“Have you tried rebooting? Just switch it off at the main switch and then on again.”
This is his work, trouble-shooting problems with computer systems. Five o’clock on a sunny summer evening, no time for anyone to be sitting in front of a screen.
“I’m not at my laptop right now. Give me half an hour and I’ll call back and log into your system.”
He puts his phone away.
“Sorry about that.”
Behind them in the emptying field the band is playing “My Way” to the sound of smashing crockery. The sun is out again. The husbands and wives and children and dogs are heading for their cars.
Because of all that she hasn’t said, Andrew understands that something has gone wrong.
“I shouldn’t have said we were okay for Saturday evening. I wasn’t thinking. But she seems nice.”
“She is nice. They’re both nice.”
“I think she wants to talk to me about my uncle’s collection.”
Suddenly, urgently, Maggie wants to be alone. She doesn’t want Andrew to stay for supper, as he usually does. She doesn’t want to have to face the question of what to do next Saturday, because once begun, that discussion has no escape route. Nothing whatsoever has happened, but Maggie feels an extraordinary degree of turmoil. It’s not just her future with Andrew that’s hanging in the balance, it’s her entire sense of herself. Because Andrew is so sure and so generous, she feels tight and mean. Because he’s so steady in his love, she feels incapable of love. She’s appalled at herself for wanting him to go, but that is what she wants. Now. At once. What excuse can she give him? There is none.
“I’m feeling a bit anti-social right now,” she says. “You know how I get sometimes.”
“Yes,” he says.
For a moment it seems like he’ll say more, but he doesn’t. She realizes she has no idea what’s going on inside him. He could be angry. He could be disappointed. He could be unaware.
They’re walking back to the cottage.
“Maybe I should head on back,” he says. “Back to London, I mean.”
At once she feels intense relief. Then in quick succession, gratitude that he’s made it easy, guilt that she’s hurt him, resentment that he makes her feel guilty, and shame that she’s taking it out on him. The usual suspects.
“I could run you into Lewes. Put you on the 6:20. If you really don’t mind.”
“Give me a chance to catch up on some work.”
“If you really wouldn’t mind? For some reason I’ve just run out of energy.”
“No problem. You get an early night.”
He’s so understanding. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s not as if I want some selfish bastard who only ever thinks of himself. Except somehow in this scenario I get to be the selfish bastard.
Look, here’s what I want. I want a man who
’s loving and loyal, but not too eager to please me. I want to want to please him, but I don’t want to have to please him. I don’t want to be possessed like a chattel, but I do want to be possessed like a woman. I want him to love me out of his strength, not his weakness. I want him to adore me, but for his adoration not to trap me. I want him to lead his own life and let me lead mine, but I want us to live our lives together.
Am I making impossible demands? Dad always said I behaved like a spoiled child. So who spoiled me, Dad? How else am I supposed to behave? This isn’t about who lays the table. This is my life. This is happy ever after, if that’s not too much to ask.
So now what? Watch something mindless on TV. Go to sleep lying across the bed. Wake up and not have to smile.
2
Ask yourself this, Justin. When were you last hit by a genuinely new, really big, game-changing idea? Television still has the power to do that. I’m talking about setting the agenda. Getting everyone buzzing, challenging, taking sides. And it all starts in Vienna, in 1913.
Henry Broad walks home with his wife Laura, his mind buzzing, challenging, taking sides. The route home is familiar and requires no mental attention. He is preparing for his meeting on Tuesday with a Channel 4 commissioning editor, at which he will pitch a new series idea. But no sooner has he begun to address the editor in his mind than he is caught off-guard by the mental image of a large rabbit grazing on his lawn. Not a hallucination, a memory: he saw the rabbit yesterday evening. He is overwhelmed by a surge of anger. How is this possible? The garden is rabbit-fenced. He’s found no breach in the fence, no burrow holes in the long grass of the orchard. And yet they’re getting in. This means they’ll start breeding in the garden. By next spring the rabbits will have taken over.
I truly believe, Justin, that this idea is both original and compelling. Ask yourself—
The low sunlight glints silver on the elm leaves. A cool breeze is getting up. Is this the end of the recent warm spell? What is one to think about global warming? It’s not the science that’s become murky, it’s the morality. You worry about taking plane flights because you want to believe you’re a good person. Then it turns out to be more complicated than everyone supposed, and you take the flights anyway because really there’s no other option, and you’re left feeling a little grubby, a little hypocritical.
And why do I feel this constant louring sense of foreboding? Surely not intimations of mortality. I’m only fifty-four, for fuck’s sake. And I’m swearing more than I used to. Is that part of the general decline of civility, or fear of my own fading vigor? Once upon a time we swore on the name of the Creator. Now we appeal to the great god Fuck.
Will the great god Fuck save me from the coming cataclysm?
Terry Sutton is outside his terrace house washing his car, a red Toyota Corolla. He’s stripped to the waist, revealing that he has tattoos right up his broad back. His hair is shaved close round the sides and left longer on top, like a brush.
“Not at the fête, Terry?”
“Chance’d be a fine thing,” says Terry.
“Those bloody rabbits are still getting in,” says Henry.
“See you at home,” says Laura, walking on briskly down the lane. Laura is bored by Henry’s war on the rabbits.
Terry squeezes out his cloth and straightens up, flexing the aching muscles in his back. The tattoo is an eagle with spread wings, holding the globe of the world in its claws. Beneath it a scroll bears the legend: Pain passes, pride is forever.
“Seen any droppings?” he says.
“A few. In the orchard.”
“So they’re coming in from the meadow.”
“Yes,” says Henry. “But how?”
“Oh, they’re clever little buggers.”
A white Ford Transit pulls up. A small young man in a gray tracksuit gets out. He has blond hair and a boyish face, the skin scarred with the remains of acne. He smacks one hand on the bonnet of the red Toyota.
“Waste of time cleaning this wreck, Tel.”
“Tell you what,” says Terry to Henry. “I’ll run the Nipper through your orchard, see what she finds.”
The Nipper is Terry’s dog, a Jack Russell.
“That would be great,” says Henry. “I’m up in London on Tuesday and Thursday this week. But any time you can make.”
He gives Terry and his friend a nod and heads on home. His thoughts revert to his program proposal.
Call it the elephant in the room, Justin. The thing we all pretend isn’t there. It’s not just about history, it’s not just about art, it’s about all of us today, and our conspiracy to conceal the truth. The great unmentionable. You know what that is, Justin? We don’t know any more what’s good and what’s bad. We don’t even know what we like. We rely on a small band of experts to tell us what to admire, but we’ve no idea why. And there’s a reason for this, Justin. It started in Vienna, in 1913.
Apparently young people don’t watch television today. It’s all Facebook and apps and smart phones. The days of the great television essays are over. Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation is a museum curiosity, a footnote on the now-defunct twentieth century. And with Civilisation goes civilization. The dark clouds gather. The storm approaches.
What is this storm? How is it possible to have a feeling of dread and yet have no idea what it is you fear?
Henry comes to a stop at the back gate to his house. There before him lies the small orchard. Beyond it the square lawn with its two handsome flower borders, the flame-orange crocosmia in the last of their glory. Above the border rises the brick terrace, where a gray teak table stands with its attendant chairs, and a big sun-umbrella now mottled with mildew. The last few weeks have been so warm they’ve had meals out on the terrace. The back door stands open, the door that leads into the kitchen, where Laura will even now have begun making supper.
Is this what I fear to lose? This sturdy russet house flanked by elms and limes, protected by lines of ancient hills. Yes, this too shall pass. But not yet, my friend. It’ll see me out.
Pain passes, pride is forever. In your dreams, Terry. Pride is as mortal as all the rest.
The thought brings in its train a low hiss, like the soft rustle from far off that tells you the rain is coming. So is that it, pride? Some damage to my amour-propre, some loss of status? All too likely, but no surprise there. I’ve been anticipating my descent to the scrapheap for so long that I shall feel quite at home there. I see myself stretched out at my ease on some broken-springed sofa, dreaming of ragged-trousered philanthropy. No cause for nameless dread there.
But there it is again, the distant hiss. The terror to come.
He crosses the garden quickly and enters the house by the back door. Laura is on the phone to her sister Diana. Carrie is by the fridge, looking for something to eat.
“So you’ll be here by lunchtime, then?” Laura is saying. “I’ve asked another couple to dinner.”
Henry touches Carrie’s arm, making her jump. He worries about her, she’s so withdrawn these days.
“I’m going to get myself a drink. Want anything?”
“No thanks.”
And she’s gone. All she ever does when she’s home is sit in her room alone and strum on the guitar she’s never learned to play properly. Nineteen years old, surely she should be out with her friends. But you can’t ask. It’s her life.
He pours himself a glass of wine and goes in search of the Sunday Times. Increasingly this is the form of escape he craves: sunk deep in an armchair, legs stretched out before him, wine glass balanced on the chair arm, newspaper spread over his lap. Henry is addicted to reading the papers, though quite what it is he gets out of them he’d be hard put to say. It’s not as if he cares much about the events of the day. You tell yourself you need to stay informed, but it’s a lie. What you seek is distraction.
You see a photograph of Prince William playing cricket, and you feel a ridiculous twinge of affection, for cricket, or royalty, or both. You read that Muslim bus conductors are
ejecting guide dogs from buses, because they believe dogs are unclean. Is that wrong? We believe smokers are unclean. We eject smokers from buses. Nothing is entirely right or entirely wrong. It all floats by the idle gaze, triggering little puffs of disapproval or amusement. After a while the accumulation of information, like alcohol in the bloodstream, results in a fuzzy sense that nothing matters much at all.
Rail fares are going up. A nine-year-old boy has died, strangled by a swing. Four soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
Where does it go, all this information? What part does it play in my life? You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation. They tell you that to persuade you to spend an absurd amount of money on a watch. A watch! Since when did watches become the primary display of male status?
Laura appears from the kitchen.
“Diana howled with laughter when I said we were going to the Buckingham Palace garden party. She says they’re for lollipop ladies.”
“She would.”
“I’ve still no idea what I’m going to do about a hat.”
Henry is baffled as to why they’ve been asked, but it seems churlish to refuse. It must be some form of minor recognition for his services to television.
“The whole affair will be ghastly,” he says. “We’ll never get near the Queen. Or the cucumber sandwiches.”
“Oh, Henry. You know perfectly well you want to go.”
“Well, I am curious.”
He turns round to look at her. She’s smiling at him, standing against the window, the evening sunlight glowing in her pale hair.
“Did you mind me asking Maggie and her boyfriend to dinner?”
“I was a bit surprised.”
“I really like Maggie, and we’ve never asked her round. And the boyfriend owns a rare collection of first-edition Golden Age detective fiction. He’s not at all interested in it, he’s obviously going to sell. Why shouldn’t I handle the sale for him?”
“Oh. I see.”
“What do you think I should cook? Do you think we should ask another couple? We’ll have Diana and Roddy, of course. Six isn’t much of a dinner party.”
Henry groans. Laura’s sister Diana is not his favorite person.