He looked across the room and saw a woman, directly opposite him in the semi-circle into which they had lumbered the desks. He wondered why he had not looked up before. Habit, he told himself. Habit ends here.
“My name is Isabel Field,” she said. “No, I have never tried to sell any work. I am not interested in writing commercially, I am interested in increasing my clarity of expression. I am a social worker.”
You are twenty-four or twenty-five, Colin thought, self-contained, reserved, sardonic. What struck him was that she had not hesitated; when she closed her mouth you knew she was not going to open it again until a fresh topic was raised. Her voice was accentless, or almost so. She had the fractured face of a Modigliani, clever yet obtuse; the long darting almond eyes and long supple neck. Her neat competent legs crossed when she sat down, crossed at the ankle and tucked under her chair. Her hands were long and lean, strong and beautiful, like the hands of the Lady with an Ermine.
The lady next to her said she was Mrs. Higginbottom, would they please call her Sheila, and that she wanted to write for women’s magazines. Now that is a difficult market, said Mrs. Wells with extreme vigour, a very difficult market indeed. The Reader’s Digest, a man said, those anecdotes, you know, page-fillers, Humour in Uniform, I could do a lot of those, because a lot of funny things happened to me while I was in the army. Mrs. Wells seemed enthused. He was a man whose ears stuck out. Colin looked back at Isabel Field. He felt suddenly like a refugee, the past a memory of blazing ruins; the future, the long grey road and transit camp of the displaced heart.
Unanchored, Evelyn’s mind moves backwards and forwards over the years. In the 1950s Muriel inhabited her body as though it were a machine. She had a powerful urge to bite, to tear with her teeth. For this reason, she kept her mouth covered with her hand, and swallowed her food without chewing. Reasoning that her teeth were seldom used, Evelyn did not try to take her to the dentist.
The first years were spent in cleaning Muriel, in reconciling herself to her existence. Evelyn wanted to be alone in the house; the house filled up, more than she had dreaded. After some time, Muriel began to appear sufficiently normal to be sent to school, but Evelyn was well aware that she was concealing her true nature. She spoke now more like other people, though she was still both clipped and sententious. At first she had said, “Mother, Mother,” and Evelyn thought it was “Murder” she had called out in the dark.
1950: a neighbour buys Muriel a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas, and she works it without fumbling on the parlour floor, blank side up. 1960: Muriel flings back at her statements once heard, a song from the radio, taunting her with the empty echo of her own speech. At the same time, the spare room becomes tenanted; the same mockery greets her on the stairs. Muriel has a passion for giving objects the wrong name, even when she knows the right one; it is a technique of bafflement she is practising. She glances only surreptitiously around her, moving her eyes, never her head; she can see, for self-preservation she must see, but she is not sure that she is supposed to look. Once she watched in wonder Evelyn’s ritual with the milk-money. Now she has learned that coins pay for desires. She wonders about the changing face of the clock. Is it related to the lines on her mother’s face, her increasing deafness and feebleness, the accumulation of dust upon their lives? Is it possible that every year is not the same, not just the same? Hurry, hurry, Evelyn always says: or you will not be on time…Yesterday, she says, today, tomorrow. Without causality there is no time, and there is no causality in Muriel’s head. Evelyn’s speech is just a noise, like the clatter of dustbin lids or the crack of bone, the incessant drip of the guttering. Events have no order, no structure, no purpose. Things happen because they must, because they can. Each moment belongs in infinity, each infinity cherishes its neighbour like turtle-doves on a bough. Muriel’s heart is a mathematical place, a singularity from which, in time, everything will issue.
Mrs. Wells had a flute-like voice; it would have been suitable for opening Parliament, and it seemed a pity that she would never get the opportunity.
“Rejection after rejection,” she was saying, “until finally—” and she would go on to read her class the story of the wealth and acclaim that had come to some struggling author overnight. But they were not much encouraged, for it was always some American of whom they had never heard, with a wildly improbable name. Colin had long ago ceased listening. Classrooms do not smell like classrooms any more, he thought, where is the scent of dried ink and bullying, where is my childhood?
“I also write fairy stories,” said the man whose ears stuck out. Mrs. Wells stared at him glassily, at a loss.
And Autumn does not smell like Autumn, Colin thought; where is the woodsmoke and the russet apples packed in barrels, and what are russet apples anyway, a breed or only a colour? Where are the swallows twittering on the wires? What will the swallows do when we all communicate by telepathy? I have only seen one, this year, and it did not make a summer.
I will never be a writer, he thought, I will never learn it, just as last year I did not learn Russian, I will never do it, my mind runs to clichés like abandoned plots to seed.
“You have to give people what they recognise and understand,” Mrs. Wells was saying sweetly.
Autumn is only the wet lamplight on the black wet road, soup out of Sylvia’s packets, a splutter and a cough from the car engine at eight in the morning; kids whining and defaulting dragged by their scruffs from September through to Advent, transistor blah-blah, only two thousand shopping days to Christmas, blah-blah, God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
“Mushrooms,” said Mrs. Moffat with pride. “I have sent an article to The Edible World on the cultivation of mushrooms.”
My vegetable love will grow, thought Colin, vaster than Empires and more slow.
“Do read it to us,” Mrs. Wells shrilled. “Could you, would you, read it to us, and we might help you with helpful hints. But first we must have our little assignment, shall we? ‘An Interesting Experience.’ Mr. Sidney?”
Colin grinned. “I’m sorry, I haven’t done my homework.”
“Oh, now, that’s a pity, Mr. Sidney.”
Her tone was light; if there was genuine grief, she kept it out of her voice. It is commendable, he thought, her restraint. A bare branch tapped and tapped against the window, dice in the evening’s pot.
“I couldn’t think of anything to write about.”
Mrs. Wells was shocked into reproach. “But Mr. Sidney, there’s always something to write about. That’s the whole point.”
“I didn’t think any of my experiences were interesting.”
“But there’s a book in each of us, Mr. Sidney.”
“Is there?” said Colin, engaged by this. “I wonder if people would like to tell us what book there is in them? I should like mine to be Les Liaisons Dangereuses or The Brothers Karamazov, but more likely it is something like Famous Five Join the Circus.”
“I should like mine to be Mansfield Park,” said Isabel, without a smile.
“Now, Mr. Sidney,” Mrs. Wells said, “you know I meant a book of our own, of our very own. We may think that we lead very ordinary lives, but believe me, it’s this very ordinariness that is the stuff of great books of all time. Look at Jane Eyre.”
“I wouldn’t call that ordinary,” Colin said. “Having this madwoman up in the attic, biting people.”
“Stabbing,” Isabel said.
“Stabbing, biting…though come to think of it, it happens all the time in the classes I teach.”
“Well, there you are then,” Mrs. Wells said. “Miss Field, have you got an interesting experience?”
Colin turned in his chair, all attention. The Duke of Norfolk, he thought; not altogether inconsequentially, because it was the name of the pub to which he hoped to take Isabel Field.
The lounge of the public house was heaving with wet raincoats, smelling of damp fake-furs and warming plastic. Electric coals twinkled merrily; above the bar, coloured Christmas lig
hts winked around the calendar, and a notice informed the public that spirits are served in measures of one-sixth of a gill. Colin read it avidly, and the notice which said he didn’t have to be mad to work here but it helped. It was half-past nine, filling up. Colin manoeuvred for a corner table, and read the beermat as he pulled out Isabel’s chair, thinking, nobody pulls out chairs in a pub, what do you think it is, the bloody Dorchester? He was very anxious about the impression he was making.
“It’s the nearest,” he said apologetically, “and it’s quite nice really, you never get any rowdy people.”
“No horse-brasses. Good.”
“Plastic beams are my bête noire. What will you have to drink?”
She hesitated. “Gin.”
“Righto.”
Colin began to push his way to the bar. Singularly failing, as always, to catch the barmaid’s eye, he took time to look back at Isabel. Her eyes were cast down; perhaps she also read beermats. Her fingers were interlaced on the table in front of her in a formal pose, as if she were about to deliver a public statement. Patience on a monument, smiling at grief, Colin thought. This terrible habit of inappropriate quotation. How do you know she has a grief, perhaps she is just waiting for her drink, perhaps she doesn’t like to stare around her. Absolutely the worst you can do, he thought, is to fail. Isolated in his gaze, she gave the effect of a study, monochrome, perhaps the unnoticed frame on the back wall of an exhibition, or one of those grainy smudged photographs of Russian streets, a woman looking indistinctly for a moment into the lens of a strange culture. Her clothes were always beige or charcoal or grey, or a peculiarly soft dead green which he had never seen on anyone else. But then he had never looked.
He set the glass down in front of her, gin and orange.
“Oh, no, no,” she said quickly, “this wasn’t what I meant.”
Colin’s face creased with concern. “I’m sorry, was it gin and tonic you wanted, you didn’t—”
He began to get heavily to his feet. She arrested him with a quick flicking motion of her hand.
“This will be fine.” She picked up the glass and looked down into it, as if it contained a rare fish. “I’ve never had one of these before,” she said.
She sipped the drink very quickly. She’s nervous, he thought, not as collected as she likes to appear, she’s a highly strung young woman.
“You have to ask for what you want,” he said gently, as if instructing a child.
She smiled. “Yes, I know.”
There was a pause.
“Sylvia always—Sylvia is my wife.”
“I didn’t think you were married.”
“No? I don’t look married?”
“You look unkempt.”
“She tries,” Colin said dismally. “I’m just an untidy person. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought my wife into the conversation.”
“There was no conversation for you to bring her into,” Isabel said. “There seems to be one now.”
“I suppose now that—well, you won’t want to…”
“What?”
“Have a drink.”
“Because you are married?”
“Yes.”
“Drinking gin is not really the same as committing adultery. Though I daresay it sometimes precedes it. I don’t know. I have no experience.” She took a sip from her glass, her eyes fixed on his face. “Would she mind?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said. He honestly did not. He wracked his brains, but could get no further. It must be very remote from Sylvia’s reckoning, that anyone would agree to have a drink with him. He wanted to say, why are you here, I am not good-looking, I have nothing you could possibly want.
“There’s Mr. Cartwright,” Isabel said. “His ears stick out, don’t they? I hope they’re not all going to come in here. Mr. Cartwright writes fairy stories.”
“What? Oh, yes,” Colin said. “I thought he wrote Humour in Uniform.”
“And fairy stories. Didn’t you listen?”
“No, I never listen.”
“He showed me one last week. I suppose he thought I might be sympathetic.”
Colin looked at her appraisingly. He would not have thought so, himself.
“Do you find it, you know, valuable, this class?” he asked her.
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“It’s not much our sort of thing, is it?”
Then she did see, she did feel, that there was some bond between them; Colin put the back of his hand to his forehead, as if he expected to find it warm. “Then why do you come?” he said.
“I don’t know. Why do you?”
“To get away from Sylvia.” He hunched forward. It had taken such a long time to grasp, such a short time to say. “Last year I took Italian conversation and car maintenance and Poets of the First World War.”
“Ah, yes,” Isabel said.
“You see some connection?”
“No.”
“You sounded as if you saw some connection. As if it were significant.”
“There is no connection. That is what is significant.”
“I am a schoolteacher,” Colin said.
“Ah, then the general information is of use to you.”
“No, not really.” He felt defeated. “I just do it, as I say, I want to get away from my wife.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. She’s a nice woman.”
“How many children have you got?”
“Three. Suzanne, she’s eight, Alistair’s nearly six, Karen’s three.”
“Are you going to have any more?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I was watching you,” she said. “In the classroom. Trying to analyse you. You seem so discontented.”
“Do you like analysing people?”
“It passes the time.”
“Is that a main concern of yours?”
“Well, not really,” she said. “It passes itself, without our assistance. It has the knack.”
“I’m in love with you,” Colin said.
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, yes,” he insisted. “Absolutely true. Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“That’s academic,” Isabel said. “This is not first sight.”
“But I have been in love with you, since the first week. Tell me, do you believe in it?”
“I don’t think I believe in love at any sight,” she said grimly.
Colin’s face fell. “That’s a terrible shame. A terrible admission. For a young woman.” He took thought. “Another gin?”
“Please.”
“With tonic?”
“With tonic.”
“Look, you must feel my pulse,” he said. “Go on, feel it. My pulse-rate’s sky-high.”
“I don’t know.” She ignored his hand. “I don’t know anything about pulse-rates.”
“Am I embarrassing you?”
“No.”
“I thought I might be embarrassing you.”
“Do I look embarrassed?”
“No, I must admit, you look quite calm. I had to say all this, I hope you understand why. I couldn’t have lived with it for another week. To tell the truth, I can’t stand seeing you only once a week. Will you meet me some other night?”
“Where?”
He was aghast. “You will?”
She gave him a level stare. “I didn’t say whether I would or not, I said ‘Where?’”
“Wherever you like. I’ll collect you. I’ll pick you up. Where do you live?”
“I’ll write down my address.”
“Have you got a pen?”
“Of course,” she said, “I have a pen.” She took a small pad out of her bag, scribbled her address, and handed him the leaf. He put it in his wallet. His face showed disbelief.
“I live with my father,” she said.
“Do you? I didn’t think…”
“Why not?”
“I imagined you having a fl
at somewhere. With other girls. You know. To be honest I’m glad. I couldn’t see myself calling at a flat for you. I wouldn’t like to, you know, present myself.”
“You don’t think you’re presentable?”
“What about your mother, is she…?”
“Dead.”
“Sorry. Will you introduce me to your father?”
“I don’t think you’d have much in common. He’s old…he’s retired. He was a bank manager. He has hobbies.”
“Oh yes?”
“Early railways. Numismatics. Military history.”
Colin smiled. “I’ll have to take some more evening classes.”
“I’d rather you didn’t meet.”
“Would he disapprove of you…going out with me?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine what his opinion would be.”
“Aren’t you close?”
“We lead our own lives.”
“Isn’t it a bit dull, living at home?”
“No. It’s not dull.” She leaned forward. “So, Colin, am I right? Are you discontented?”
“Of course I am.”
“And do you think you will ever leave them?”
“Yes, I…” He dropped his eyes, shifted his feet a little under the table. “Yes, I think it quite possible that one day soon I won’t find it possible to go on as I am.”
Colin drained his half-pint. He took out a clean folded handkerchief and dabbed his top lip with it. Already he was making giant strides.
Out in the conservatory. It is not really worthy of the name, just a glass lean-to at the back of the house, but Evelyn calls it the conservatory. There have never been plants in it. Clifford had not been much of a gardener. Get some flagstones down, had been Clifford’s idea. Muriel could not tell flagstones from gravestones. She referred to them as such. Her morbid fancy has by now taken a thorough grip on Evelyn, who often imagines she is walking on the dead.
Out in the conservatory are Clifford’s collections. Newspapers: the local Reporter for all the years they had lived at Buckingham Avenue. There was no topic which had interested him, no local good work or sport or sewerage scheme. He had merely laid them aside in the spare room, week after week. After his death Evelyn had left them for a while, and then, sensing that the room was needed, had dashed them in great bales down the stairs and humped them along the hallway and out through the back door. It is absurd to say, she tells Muriel, that we do not have newspapers. They are all there, with stopped clocks and defunct lightbulbs and a mousetrap, postcards from relatives escaped to Bournemouth, Little Dorrit with the back off, a cakestand, a china duck, a railway timetable from 1954. They yellow and moulder. In a lesser neighbourhood, there would be rats. Perhaps there are.