A Pure Clear Light (21 page)

‘Is that really good enough?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘And even if it were, I’m not quite sure, after all, that it really is so.’

‘Ah.’

‘Because, you see,’ and Lydia’s voice became quite gentle, ‘if it weren’t quite clear—clear enough, that is—then you wouldn’t, after all, have come here.’

‘Would I not?’

‘No, I’m afraid you really would not. Only a guilty conscience would have brought you here.’

‘Not simple anxiety?’

‘No. There wouldn’t even have been any anxiety, you see. Not you.’

Simon considered these statements. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

‘So…’ Lydia went on, ‘the fact is—sorry to be so crude, but needs must—you have apparently been having a liaison with this woman, and you’ve been found out; and now you want to know what I’m going to do.’

‘I hadn’t really thought you’d do anything, actually.’

‘I wouldn’t tell Flora?’

‘No, you wouldn’t do that.’

‘I’d keep your secret, then.’

‘When you put it like that—’ ‘That is what it amounts to.’

‘All right. I suppose it does.’

‘That I, Lydia, should keep your secret—’ ‘Yes, it is rather much. I do see that.’

‘It’s a little too much. I won’t undertake to keep it altogether, however. Only to keep it from Flora.’

Simon was silent, speechless, for now, at the sight of all these appalling implications.

‘There is of course something you’ll have to do in return,’ said Lydia. ‘Or rather, in fact, for its own sake.’

‘What’s that?’ It could only get worse, couldn’t it?

‘Stop seeing her.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Don’t be pathetic.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Don’t be stupid. You can, and you will. Pretend this is wartime, and one of you has been killed. Do whatever you have to. Seriously. You have no choice. Whatever it was, it’s finished. Do you understand? I’m willing to keep your secret of past folly, but not of a present and continuing folly. To say no worse. It’s out of the question—I’m sure you see that.’

Simon was silent. He saw.

Lydia sat up straight. ‘I’m glad that’s sorted out,’ she said. ‘Oh, just one thing—who is she?’

Simon, shattered, ruined, in shreds, looked pitifully down at his hands. ‘Her name is Gillian Selkirk,’ he said. ‘She’s an accountant, she works in the City. I met her during the summer, when Flora and the kids were in France.’ He was watching his past unwinding like a film before him, a drowning man: Camden Town; David and Sarah; Gillian Selkirk; the mansion flat; Solomon; everything.

‘Well,’ said Lydia, almost harshly, ‘chalk it up to experience, Simon. You were careless. Or perhaps foolhardy is the better word. Whatever. Look, I must get ready now and be off.’

Simon looked up, his eyes dull. ‘Shall I give you a lift, then?’ he said. ‘It’s only fair, when I’ve kept you.’

‘No,’ said Lydia. ‘It’s all right. I’ll just make it if I get going now.’

‘Yes,’ said Simon, ‘right, okay.’ He got up.

She went to the door with him. Here she inexplicably touched his arm, and he as inexplicably turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked dispassionately at his drawn face. ‘Take care, Simon,’ she said. ‘You utter creep.’

‘You take care too,’ he said. ‘You—Lydia.’ Then he was gone.

Lydia sighed, and began to get ready. What to wear? Ah yes. Men, she thought; men are just
pathetic.
But—well. There we are.

80

‘I had lunch with Lydia today.’

‘Good show.’

‘I say, Robert?’

‘Louisa?’

‘I suppose you’ve never come across an accountant named Gillian Selkirk, have you?’

‘Shouldn’t say I have. Accountants are not really my sort of thing.’

‘Well, no, but I just thought, the City—’ ‘Big place. Many mansions.’

‘She’s a blonde.’

‘I believe they quite often are.’

‘She’s the woman Simon Beaufort has been having an affair with.’

‘The naughty little thing. Shall I report her to the Institute of Chartered Accountants? Anonymously, of course.’

‘Robert, do be serious.’

‘Is that really necessary?’

‘Think of Flora.’

‘That’s another matter altogether. I was thinking—as I supposed you intended I should—of the accountant Selkirk. Does Flora actually know?’

‘Good God no. And she never must. I’m relying on your discretion absolutely. Obviously.’

‘Absolutely. Obviously.’

‘I think Simon is an utter creep.’

‘We-e-ell—
utter
is a bit strong, perhaps.’

‘Lydia told him so, too.’

‘Now where exactly does Lydia come into all this?’

‘Don’t you remember? She saw them, that time I told you about. And it turns out you were right, after all, because on Friday night she saw them again, and all is now revealed.’ And Louisa brought Robert up-to-date, with a rational account of the events of Friday evening and Saturday morning. ‘So there it is,’ she said. ‘Ghastly, isn’t it?’

Robert considered. ‘Well, ghastlyish,’ he said. ‘Still, as long as it’s all over.’

‘Well, we have only Simon’s word for that.’

‘Have to trust the chap.’

‘No earthly reason why we should.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘
Flora
,’ Robert said.

‘Yes, Flora,’ said Louisa. ‘Of all people.’

‘What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.’

‘You know perfectly well that it can.’

‘I was really just trying it out to see how it sounded.’

‘And it sounds like rubbish. Everything is changed now, forever.’

‘Everything changes, all the time: forever. All the time. No matter what.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Believe me.’

‘All right.’

‘The wind bloweth where it listeth.’

‘Whoo-oo-oo,’ said Louisa. ‘Whoo-oo, whoo-oo.’

Robert smiled at her. He had worked conscientiously for all the other glittering prizes he had won, but Louisa had come like a falling star into his hand unbidden, unforeseen; he would never quite believe his luck. ‘
Whoo-oo!
’ he replied. ‘Look, it’s nearly half-past: shall we watch
Newsnight
?’

81

‘What is it—oh—tea—I say—’ Simon sat up, still half asleep: oh, those knives. The grey day. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

Flora put the tea beside him. ‘I thought I’d better wake you,’ she said. ‘It’s past ten o’clock; you mightn’t have been able to sleep tonight.’

‘Aren’t you going to church?’

‘No, not today.’ She sat down on the low chair by the window. She looked at him. ‘I don’t have to go every single Sunday,’ she said. ‘I mean, one wouldn’t want to overdo it.’

‘God forbid.’

‘Are you feeling quite all right, Simon?’

‘Yes, I’m fine; never better.’

He had gone to see Gillian straightaway—that is, after a long time of sitting by the canal, on a bench on the towpath, watching the water rippling in the biting winter breeze. He hadn’t telephoned first. There she’d been, in an apron, cooking. Pleased and happy. He’d soon put a stop to that. She had sat down at the kitchen table, leaning her arms on it. ‘It’s all right,’ she had said. ‘Truly. It’s all right. Something like this was bound to happen, it always is. Nothing’s ever any good; not really. Not forever. No, don’t worry about me: I’m fine. Please don’t worry. Look, I must get on. Rupert and I are giving a dinner party—see—he’s going to do the steak
au poivre
, and I’m doing the
gratin dauphinois
: and I’m making this pudding as a surprise. He doesn’t know about that, he thinks we’re just having biscuits and cheese afterwards. See?’ There was an illustration in the
Larousse
gastronomique
open on the table. ‘And I must get on now,’ she said. ‘Or it won’t be a surprise.’ And he saw everything that was wrong, and had always been, with them—with her, with him, with it—from the start. But he wouldn’t not have had it for the world, because he truly, so far as he could understand the phenomenon, loved her. And now this suffering: and hers. Oh God: hers, too.

Not that he didn’t love Flora. Not that he loved Flora, now or at any time, any the less.

‘You look so whacked. Poor darling—I’m afraid you’ve been overdoing it.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘You’re always like this at this stage of a production.’

‘Am I?’

‘Always.’

‘What a drag for you.’

‘I don’t mind for myself. Look, I was thinking we might have an early lunch, and then go to the Tate.’

‘What a bizarre idea.’

‘Yes, it’s not bad, is it? But I think Janey’s got something else on with the eternal Amaryllis, so it’s just Thomas and Nell. Do you want to come along?’

‘I dunno.’

‘No, do. It will refresh your spirit.’

‘Oh, will it?’

‘We’re going to look at the Wattses.’

‘The Wattses.’

‘
Hope
, etcetera. He’s the coming man.’

The world spinning backwards again.

‘He’s dead.’

‘Yes, but he’s coming nonetheless. That’s what Brian says. You know, that painter.’

‘These Australians who come here and tell us what’s what.’

Flora laughed. ‘Actually he did say that an Englishman had got there first; there’s a book just coming out.’

‘So if we bash round there this afternoon we’ll get ahead of the crowd, eh?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Do come.’

‘I’ll see.’

Where else should one, could one, go, on this afternoon— Patagonia? So he went with Flora and Thomas and Nell to the Tate Gallery: they dropped Janey off in Holland Park on the way.

Hope
was high up on the wall: ‘I can’t see,’ Thomas complained. Simon lifted him up and the child stared at the painting for a minute. ‘I don’t like her,’ he said. ‘Put me down.’ Simon and Flora, continuing both to contemplate the painting—Nell meanwhile giving every appearance of so doing—each wondered, separately, fleetingly, whether in fact it were something any child should ever see.

‘Hmmm,’ said Simon at last. ‘Yes.’

Flora turned her head towards him. She had been holding Thomas’s hand all the while. ‘Shall we go and look at something else?’ she said.

‘All right,’ Simon agreed.

‘We’ll see if we can find something Thomas will like.’

‘And something for me, too,’ said Nell in a voice which had only the faintest note of melancholy.

‘Of course, darling,’ said Flora. ‘I’ll bet there’s something in this very room that you’ll like. Walk around it and see, while I wait here for you.’

She sat down and watched Nell’s progress until the child suddenly returned, looking pleased. ‘I’ve found something I like,’ she announced. Flora and Thomas went with her to see, and then they walked slowly about finding a picture for Thomas; but Simon continued, after all, now sitting where Flora had, to stare up at Watts’s enigmatic work: staring, but no longer truly seeing—or seeing, perhaps, more truly than the naked eye can do: wondering, almost overwhelmed as he was by the consciousness of his devastation, how, and what, to think of himself, now.

Much later, when the children were all in bed, Flora picked up the postcards they had bought before leaving the gallery and looked through them, smiling at Nell’s choices, laughing at Thomas’s. She came at last to
Hope
, and gazed at the picture again for a time. ‘Awfully strange, isn’t it?’ she murmured.

‘Everything is strange, really.’

‘Everything is real, strangely.’

Simon laughed, briefly, mirthlessly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder how we can actually go on.’

‘Well, we simply must, that’s all. That, really, or strangely, is
how.
You see—after all, it’s all so transitory.’

‘Yes,’ said Simon; ‘but—’

‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘But.’

And there really seemed no need, at least for the time being, to say another word.