The Visitors

  I frowned at the costume I was wearing, a suit that was a hand-me-down from Rose. Rose was about to marry; her father was banned from the ceremony and Peter was to give her away – if he could get leave. He’d joined the RAF the previous summer and had been posted to Scotland for pilot training. I inspected the suit dispassionately. It was grey. Even extensively altered, let down and taken in, it didn’t fit me; it was a misfit – as I was. So this is how it feels, I thought: three years of mourning, two years of marriage, one year alone, months of solicitors. I’m wrecked. Washed up on foreign shores. That’s the latest.

  ‘Oh, and that reminds me,’ Nicola exclaimed, turning to me. ‘Howard Carter has died. The announcement was in The Times yesterday. Did you see it, Lucy?’

  ‘Yes. I saw it.’

  ‘I’ve read the obituaries – well, what obituaries there were. The Times hasn’t done him yet, though no doubt it will. There was one in the Telegraph… I see he never published that so-called scholarly account of his work. But then that’s hardly surprising. Carter wasn’t a scholar. He was an adventurer.’

  ‘He was more than that, Nicola. Much more. You do him a disservice.’

  ‘Oh, very well. How should I know? I never met the man.’

  She paused, and I could see she was trying to fight the petulance that often afflicted her now – fighting to curb the sharpness of her tongue too. She was forty-one; her beauty remained almost unchanged. A few lines had begun to show around her mouth, but she retained her slender grace; her thick bronze hair was ungreyed, the pale classical profile was unaltered. Time and age had been kind to her face, but they had not sweetened her volatile temper.

  ‘Well, Mr Carter always sounded a charlatan to me. Still, no doubt the great and the good will turn out for him – shall you go to his funeral, Lucy?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’

  A deflective, colourless answer. Nicola knew such replies were my stock-in-trade; she’d watched me growing up and perfecting them. She gave me one of her weighing looks. Perhaps she sensed something was wrong. But the moment passed. Clair made a remark about funerals: Frankly, I don’t want one. I’d like to go up in a puff of smoke. And Nicola forgot the matter; once, she would not have done so.

  Or did she? Maybe it was I who was blind. Not long afterwards, rising to leave, I realised that Nicola’s spirits were as low as my own, and that something was troubling her. ‘Oh, what a miserable conversation!’ she cried. ‘No, no more wine, Clair. How horribly bright this room is. It hurts my eyes. My head aches.’ I saw that her hands were trembling violently. Clair must have seen this too; as I edged towards the door, she crossed the room at once, knelt down and put her arms around Nicola with a swift, surprising tenderness.

  ‘Oh, why did you have to mention funerals? All evening – nothing but worms and graves and epitaphs,’ Nicola said to her fretfully.

  ‘I didn’t start it, darling. You brought the subject up,’ Clair replied gently. She glanced over her shoulder, and motioned me to leave; the gesture was both impatient and dismissive. I backed away.

  Nicola made a small sound, murmured some words.

  ‘My darling. My sweet love… Ah, don’t, please don’t,’ Clair was saying, as the door closed on them.

  37

  Howard Carter’s funeral was held in Putney in south London, four days after his death. Until the last moment, I still could not decide whether to attend: one of the numerous side-effects of my marriage and its dissolution was the indecision it induced. I was unravelling, I felt; my stitches had dropped off the needles, I couldn’t find a way to cast them on again, I must learn to reknit myself. In a weak moment, I’d telephoned Rose and asked her if she’d accompany me, but she refused. Rose had neither liked nor admired Carter very much, and I was not in her good books either: she disapproved of the planned divorce; she said marriage was for keeps, and I should go back to Eddie… No, she couldn’t come to the funeral with me, she said sniffily; she and her fiancé had another engagement.

  ‘Eve will be there, of course,’ she went on, thawing a little. ‘She’s terribly cut up. It was Hodgkin’s disease, you know – Carter’s last years weren’t easy. Eve wants him to have a good send-off, but the numbers are looking thin, so she’s ringing around, trying to drum up attendance. She’s not getting much luck. Too many people opting to send wreaths – the coward’s way out. They think that gets them off the hook. You should go. You owe it to him.’

  The coward’s route tempted me at once: perhaps a wreath would suffice? Knowing it would not, feeling shabby in mind and body, I set off for the smartest florist’s I knew, the one Eddie always used when trying to propitiate the many hostesses he offended – the hostesses who always forgave him and asked him back. In heavy rain, I walked the length of the King’s Road, from World’s End to the smart Cadogan Estate area of Chelsea. I avoided the marital nest down a side-street. I examined the designs on offer – and miserable ugly things they were, those crosses and weighty circlets of laurel. I told the young woman serving me that I didn’t want anything like that. I knew papyrus was out of the question – I had some residue of sense – but might olive leaves be feasible? Interwoven with berries, with something fresh, like cornflowers.

  ‘Olive leaves, Mrs Vyne-Chance?’ said the assistant, who was pert. She raised her plucked brows and pursed her painted lips. ‘Cornflowers? It’s March. Regardless of season, we find we have no call for things like that.’

  She looked me up and down: I was not looking my best. I was looking – well, let’s just say, bedraggled and a trifle unhinged. She registered that fact with a small tight smile. Wasn’t much to write home about in the first place. Now she’s let herself go and no wonder, said her expression. Could she have heard the gossip about my marriage and its unravellings? Almost certainly. Eddie came here at least once a week, and anyway he was famous in Chelsea. Everyone took a keen interest in his exploits, even the shopkeepers – especially the shopkeepers, since he owed money to most of them.

  I lost it a bit then, then – looking back, I can see that. I asked the girl what, in that case, she did have a call for. I said the wreaths on offer were ugly, unimaginative, and hopelessly vieux jeu; this last was Eddie’s favourite term for anything he wished to disparage, whether it was another poet’s work, or the style of someone’s drawing room. In extremis.

  ‘Via what, madam?’

  ‘Vieux jeu. Old-fashioned. Out of date. Old hat. Unoriginal. Bloody frightful. Wouldn’t put it on a cat’s grave. Or a dog’s. An insult to the dead. Is that clearer?’

  That kind of reaction, that kind of talk, was another symptom of my unravelling, my malaise: I’m turning into Madame Maladie, I thought. I was saved by the owner of the shop who, hearing this altercation, which continued some while, emerged from a rear room, sent the assistant packing, and listened gravely while I explained what I needed and why. He was gay, as we’d say now, queer as we said then; he was camp and astute. He certainly knew about Eddie’s exploits, I thought, as I apologised.

  ‘Too marvellously exciting, Mrs Vyne-Chance,’ he said, throwing up his hands. ‘Something different at long last. Egyptian… they used beads, you say? Madly original – we shall start a new fashion. How if we were to use this – if I interwove it with that? I have a book on Tut somewhere, I shall consult it for inspiration. Leave it entirely in my safe little hands, my dear Mrs VC… Oh, and when you next see that naughty husband of yours, remind him he owes me five quid for the last lot of lilies. Penitence comes so expensive.’ He winked.

  He was as good as his word, and creative too; the circlet he made was not authentic, how could it be? But it was close in spirit.

  My offering looked strange next to the other conventional funeral flowers, I felt, when I finally reached the chapel at Putney Vale Cemetery where Carter’s funeral was to be held. I had steeled myself to go – as I knew I should, as I knew Frances would have wished. I am here for me and Frances, I told myself.

  It was a cold, grey day, threatening rain.
The cemetery, faintly municipal, lines of graves punctuated by yews, was enormous. As I arrived – late; lost in Putney – the other mourners were just filing in. I joined the huddle of latecomers bringing up the rear, crept in behind them and sat down alone behind a pillar in a pew at the back. When the coffin processed in, it was a bright shiny mahogany, with ornate silvery handles. Once the mutes had put down their burden and withdrawn, I counted the meagre congregation, but the huddled figures and the women’s hats confused me – nineteen, fewer? There were two hymns, which I mouthed. The first was ‘Fight the Good Fight’, which Carter would surely have appreciated.

  The address was awkward and ineloquent; I think the priest officiating had never met Carter, but someone must have primed him, and he did his best. He spoke of Carter’s work at length, consulting copious notes. I heard ‘great Egyptologist’ and ‘one of the most exciting episodes in the annals of archaeology’ and ‘find of the century’. After that, I gazed at the stained-glass windows, trying to conjure the Valley as I’d known it in childhood, and Howard Carter, the unreadable man, as I remembered him.

  The memories flickered, came close, but eluded my grasp; they disappeared into the billowing white dust of Carter’s excavations. I came to only when I realised that the coffin was being carried out – and that many of the congregation were looking at their watches and murmuring. We filed out behind it, heads bent. Once outside, several of the mourners left, making for their cars in the way people do when they wish to disguise unseemly haste. I joined the black straggle of those who’d remained loyal and were escorting the coffin to the graveside for burial. I attached myself to the tail of this procession, and then hung back. I edged behind a yew; that gave some shelter. It had begun to rain and umbrellas were being raised. I had no umbrella.

  Why Putney? Why here? I’d heard via Rose, who had it from Eve, that in later years Carter had owned a series of flats in central London; the last had been in Kensington, near the Albert Hall. Putney was a long way from there, the other side of the Thames. This cemetery felt wrong – but then where in England would feel right for such a man’s final resting place?

  Perhaps Carter’s family had made the choice: some of the mourners were family, I thought. There was an elderly man, stooped and obviously unwell, who bore a passing resemblance to him and might perhaps be one of his brothers; there was a young woman, who also seemed to be related; she was neatly dressed, wearing what looked like a new hat, and was crying quietly into a handkerchief. As was Eve, I saw, recognising her after all these years as she stood, head bowed, by the graveside.

  I stayed listening to the quiet and beautiful words of the Committal. I stayed until the end. It began to rain more heavily. Dust and ashes, sure and certain hope. Scatterings of earth on the coffin lid. People were turning to leave. I hesitated, then approached and spoke briefly to Eve, who clasped my hands and said: ‘Gracious, Lucy, is it you? But of course I remember you. Howard would be so glad you came… Isn’t this terrible? He was such a great man – you remember that. He had the world at his feet once, and now… Oh my dear, don’t – we mustn’t cry. Doesn’t this bring back memories of the Valley? Do you remember the time when you and Frances––’ She broke off, gave me a sad ghost of her former dimpling smile, turned up the collar of her fur and sighed. ‘Certain people conspicuous by their absence, Lucy. Isn’t it hateful?’

  Someone claimed her attention and with a Bless you, dear, and a kiss to my cheek, a press of her black kid-gloved hand, a brush of her fur coat, she turned away. A queue had formed by the young woman who had wept and, as I waited to shake hands with her, I heard her speaking, with simple dignity, to a small bent old woman. ‘Poor Uncle Howard. He was so brave. Yes, Hodgkin’s – and he was in dreadful pain for years. He never spoke of it. None of the treatments really worked. But he soldiered on, and it was only in the last year that he became… Well, no. It wasn’t swift. I wouldn’t say swift. But a quiet end. Mercifully quiet. The nurse and I were with him. He just slipped away from us, between one breath and the next… Thank you. That’s very kind. Yes, we had hoped for a few more people, but his friends – many of them don’t live in London, you see, and I think the journey was… Yes, aren’t the flowers lovely?’

  I waited my turn, shook the young woman’s hand and said the usual formal things. I was agitated, and I could tell that the words were not coming out as they should. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of you to say that.’ I turned away and began to thread my way between the gravestones. The grass was wet and it was beginning to rain very heavily. Reaching the main path, I faced the cemetery gates and began to trudge towards them. I’d walk back to World’s End, I decided. I missed the kind of walking I was accustomed to when working on books, but any walk, even through busy streets, cleared the mind and led to places that were often unexpected – led to calm, for instance, a calm that was not always a mirage.

  I was perhaps halfway down that drive, yes, I think halfway down it, when I realised someone was behind me, hastening to catch up. I could hear a man’s footsteps on the gravel. I increased my pace. I did not look round. I wanted to speak to no one – and, apart from Eve, surely no one here knew me? The man behind me also increased his pace. He caught up with me in three strides. He put a restraining hand on my wet coat sleeve and said, ‘Lulu?’

  I swung around: a tall man, wearing a dark overcoat with the collar turned up against the rain; broad shoulders, his hair wet from the rain, and darker than it had been in his childhood. No trace now of the injury he’d sustained in the civil war in Spain. When I’d last seen him, his arm, fractured by a bullet, had been in a sling. I wasn’t sure when that brief encounter had taken place: a year ago? Now he was in the RAF and had been posted somewhere for training; I found I couldn’t remember where. I had to tilt my hat back and look up to meet his eyes – his eyes I’d have recognised anywhere: inky blue, like those of the mother from whom he’d inherited them, but their expression very different. We stared at one another in silence. I saw him take in the details of my appearance. Perhaps they shocked him.

  He said, ‘Lucy? Are you ill? What’s happened to you?’

  And at the same moment I said, ‘Peter? Where did you spring from? Why on earth are you here?’

  ‘To see you. Rose said you’d be here. I was looking for you in the chapel, but you must have been hiding somewhere. I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind, that you hadn’t come after all. I did glimpse you talking to Eve, but I thought – no, that can’t be her.’ He paused in a grave, considering way. ‘I didn’t recognise you, Lucy… I expect your hat confused me.’

  ‘All right, it’s a hideous hat. I do know that.’

  ‘It is pretty bad. And the rain hasn’t improved it.’

  ‘I know it’s not just the hat. I know how I look. Did Rose send you?’

  ‘No. Rose did not send me. I came of my own accord. At the first opportunity.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Rose arranged this. Well, you can tell her from me, I don’t need her assistance or yours. I’m perfectly fine. Fit as a fiddle, never felt better, pick your superlative. I’ve been to the funeral, I’ve done my duty, I’ve paid my final respects and now I’m walking home––’

  ‘The perfect day for a stroll. In that case, I’ll walk with you.’

  He glanced up at the sky; the rain was now torrential. Taking my arm, he tucked it inside his own. I resisted and then stopped resisting. Looking down, he examined my hand – my bare and very cold hand. Madame Maladie had forgotten to bring her gloves as well as her umbrella.

  ‘You’ve removed your wedding ring, I see.’ He drew me along beside him at a fast pace, pausing only when we reached the cemetery gates. Leading me into the street, into the noise, the sudden clamour beyond, he came to a halt.

  ‘So – which way? Where are we going, Lucy?’

  I can’t remember what reply I gave… The other side of the river, World’s End? Whatever I said, it’s immaterial. We both knew exactly where w
e were going: that knowledge had flashed between us the second we turned to face one another. It is always swift. No point in pretending otherwise.

  We began walking northwards and, after various detours and on reaching a bridge, paused to look down at the Thames, sullen, dark, an incoming tide coursing through a transformed city. Peter leaned over the parapet to examine the water, and I did too. The rain was beginning to abate, but we were both drenched by then. My mind felt marvellously clear, rinsed of all impediments.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve told me all that,’ he said, after an interval.

  ‘I haven’t said very much.’

  ‘Then your silences must speak, Lucy.’

  That was that. He took my hand and we continued walking. The route we took that day was no doubt erratic; it was a long wind through the city, and afterwards neither of us could recall its details. ‘I think we walked along that street,’ he’d say, ‘but why were we there?’ I couldn’t remember either – I don’t think there was any reason behind our route beyond the surprise and joy of being on it.

  ‘When did you know?’ Peter asked me, as we walked.

  ‘At the cemetery gates,’ I replied. I don’t think he believed me.

  ‘I always knew,’ he said. ‘I finally decided to stop waiting.’

  We walked on. I can remember certain places where we paused, where we lingered, and I know where we were when he took me in his arms for the first time. Outside a museum – one of the many in Kensington. Outside a bastion of learning – in a courtyard, soundless traffic, invisible passers-by, a spring day suddenly, and the clouds racing.

  ‘You’re not to tell Rose,’ I said. ‘I don’t want us to tell anyone.’