A Pure Clear Light (4 page)
It was the night before Flora and the children were to leave for France.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘You will eat properly, won’t you, I mean proper food, not canteen rubbish—’
‘It isn’t rubbish at all, it’s jolly good nosh.’
‘It isn’t fresh. There’s nothing raw.’
‘There’s salads.’
‘Well, do make sure you eat them then, not just that overcooked junk.’
‘It’s good, that canteen stuff.’
‘Sure, sure. And please don’t forget Mrs Brick’s wages, will you—I’ve left you a reminder on the bathroom mirror.’
‘Right, right.’
‘I think that’s all.’
‘Will
you
be all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Telephone me as soon as you get to Tours.’
‘Will do.’
‘And then when you get to the
gîte.
’
‘Obviously.’
‘You’re taking all this far too calmly for my liking. After all, we’ve never done this before, you going off alone with the car and the kids.’
‘Claire does it every year.’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, she and Alex don’t—you know—’
‘Whereas we do?’
‘Don’t we?’
‘Of course. Of
course.
’
‘Come here.’
Simon took Flora in his arms, sitting on the sofa, the television set still on but with the sound turned off. Flora leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, one arm loosely around his neck. After a while, ‘Isn’t life—but I can’t find the word,’ she said.
‘I think I know what you mean.’
Flora tilted her head and looked up at him. ‘
What
do I mean?’ she asked.
Simon pondered for a moment. ‘Transitory,’ he said. ‘You mean
transitory.
’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t you?’
Flora considered the question. ‘Ye-e-es,’ she said. ‘I
suppose
that’s what I mean.’ But there was something other, something more, or something, even, less, that she meant—in that strange and tiny space in the mind where it is just possible to mean without having the word which conveys that meaning. And one could not have said whether it were fatigue or fear which prevented her from searching for, and finding, the right word. The reasonable word. The
mot
juste
, as English-speakers say.
Simon might not believe in the existence of God—indeed, he categorically did not—but he knew he was on the way to the great cutting-room in the sky nevertheless. He might not believe that a person called God was going to put him through the viewing machine and decide whether or not to save him or let him fall to the floor, but he had some sense nevertheless of there being some ineradicable rule by which this decision might—however purely theoretically—be made. He was on his way to a time, a place, where—when—this awful accounting would have occurred if there had been a person called God; that there was no such person did not alter the inexorability of the journey or of its theoretical destination. Simon had not idly given Flora the word she apparently sought: life was above all else transitory—oh, how tragically, yet fortunately, transitory! As the Wanderer (or was it the Seafarer? who could remember which was which!) had insisted: Just as that sorrow passed, so shall this.
In any event, you could hardly live in Hammersmith without being all but overwhelmed with the realisation of life’s essential transience; the place was a monument to transience; and if that was a paradox, so much the better. Simon, in the family’s absence, had taken to walking in the long summer evenings: one walked for a few miles, and then one came to a pub; one had a few pints and walked home again, and went to bed. One walked down impossible blighted streets, past lovely, blighted houses, the motorway roaring overhead, the river coming into view, every transient item supporting a stream of transient life: their only absolute reality was their passing.
Simon was looking out, tentatively, for locations for his script: he meant—tentatively—to tell the story which would reveal this tragic yet fortunate transience. It was the only story there now was; it was the only story that remained. He began to believe that he would stumble across the detail of the story as long as he just kept on walking. There would be—say—a house, in a row of others like it, in which the door would open: a woman would come out, and stand there for a moment at the top of the steps, uncertain—
directed by
SIMON BEAUFORT
and he might have found the house, the row of houses, seen the door open and the woman who came out and stood at the top of the steps—stunned by the sudden magnitude of the motorway traffic’s roar—for a moment, uncertain, so soon as the end, say, of the first week of his solitude; might have begun to see the details of that story coming, slowly, then faster, into focus, might even have sat down and begun actually to write something (it was a long time since he’d actually written something: he could remember, just, what it felt like
to write
)
.
He might have done all this were it not that, tragically, or perhaps fortunately—he couldn’t, one couldn’t, say which—the dinner invitations started to come in.
‘Oh Simon you poor old thing. A whole month! Come round for a meal one night—let’s see, what about Thursday?’
‘Oh Simon I hear you’re a grass widower—poor Simon! Why don’t you pop round here for a square meal one night—are you doing anything on Tuesday?’
For as everyone knows, men can, but don’t, look after themselves when their wives are away, and it is one’s duty—and, it must be admitted, one’s pleasure—to give them a dinner or two. Poor Simon! He even found himself sharing the honours one evening with poor Alex—poor Alex Maclise, Claire being away—at the compassionate dinner table of the Ainsworths. ‘I thought I might as well kill two birds,’ said Lizzie to Alf. ‘Poor old things.’
And it was at one such dinner table—this one, as it happened, in Camden Town—that Simon met a woman called Gillian Selkirk. The name alone ought to have been enough to warn him off: as Louisa Carrington was, much later, to observe to Robert of that ilk, ‘It
writhes.
And so I dare say
does she.
’
Flora opened the shutters and looked down beyond the terrace, where Thomas was playing with some Lego, to the pool. Nell was sitting on the edge, dangling her feet in the water; Janey in a bikini was lying in the sun on a chaise longue. I should shout down and warn her not to stay in the sun too long, thought Flora.
She wondered vaguely where the Hunters could be, and then remembered that they had all—William and Denzil having found at the last minute urgent reasons of their own for doing so—gone into the village.
Flora had already had words with Janey on the subject of William Hunter, who was a year older than Janey and ought therefore to have been treated with the respect due to equals; but Janey would have none of it. ‘He’s a dork,’ she told Flora, when upbraided for acting too much the little madam.
‘He’s nothing of the kind!’ exclaimed Flora. ‘He’s a very nice, and I may say very intelligent young man. And if his manners weren’t so good he wouldn’t put up with your airs for five seconds flat.’
‘There you are, then,’ said Janey. ‘He’s a dork. I’m not saying he can
help
it. All the boys at that school are.’
‘What could you possibly know about
all the boys
at that school?’ said Flora. ‘You, at your age?’
‘
Everyone
knows about that school,’ said Janey. ‘It’s absolutely famous for dorks; it always has been.’
‘That school, miss,’ said Flora, ‘is one of the very best and most ancient not only in this country but in the world.’
‘There you are then,’ said Janey. ‘Dork City.’
‘If none of them will ever want to have anything at all to do with you, ever,’ said Flora, ‘it will serve you right.’
‘Suits me,’ said Janey.
‘I’ll remember you said that,’ said Flora. ‘Now go away, and be nice to William. Just to prove how superior you truly are. We all know now how superior you can make yourself look; the point has been made more than adequately. Let’s see how genuinely superior you are.’ Her request was granted, but she came soon enough to wish that it had not been; that she had never made it; that Janey might not be so truly, one way or another, superior.
‘Of course,’ Janey said, accommodatingly, to her mother, ‘they’re probably all utterly dorky at that age. From what I’ve seen so far.’
‘Possibly,’ said Flora. ‘If you insist on seeing them in that light. To me they just seem nice, if slightly awkward, well-meaning young men.’
Janey shrieked. ‘Men!’ she cried. ‘I wouldn’t call them
men
!’
Flora had to laugh. ‘Well, whatever,’ she said. ‘I mean, you can’t call them boys, it’s too infantile.’
‘No, they’re not boys, and they’re not men, they’re
dorks
,’ said Janey.
Flora was just about to shout out and warn Janey out of the sun when she saw two people whom Janey would unhesitatingly have termed dorks bicycling up the road. Dorks as they might be, they were now turning in at the driveway, and cycling towards the house. Flora stood watching, fascinated. Dorks they might in Janey’s estimation be, dorks they might truly be: but brave new world, that had such dorks in’t!
They were, as far as she could see from here, identical twins, and they were surpassingly beautiful: tall—albeit still evidently adolescent—slender, fair-haired and graceful. Having arrived at the
piscine
and sighted Janey on her chaise longue, they stopped cycling and stood lankily astride their machines. They looked at each other and shrugged interrogatively and one of them then spoke. ‘
Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît!
’ Janey, aware for the first time of the intrusion, opened her eyes and sat up, staring, in a passable representation of the startled faun. ‘
Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?
’ she said.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed her interlocutor; ‘you’re
English
!’
His companion smiled pleasantly. ‘Do forgive us,’ said he, ‘for disturbing you, but we’re looking for one William Hunter, whom we believe to be staying somewhere hereabouts. We thought this might be the house, but it seems we’re mistaken. We’ll leave you in peace. So sorry for the intrusion. As you were.’
They were on the point of pedalling away again when the astonished Janey found her voice. ‘No, wait,’ she said. ‘This
is
the right house. William’s just gone to the village. He’ll probably be back soon. You could wait, if you like.’
Flora continued to stand just inside the window, where she could not easily be seen from below, and went on watching, enthralled.
‘Shall we do that?’ said one of the youths to the other.
‘Or shall we go into the village and try to find him there?’ that other replied. They turned their identical blue-eyed gazes full upon the still-overwhelmed Janey, who remained seated on the chaise longue, her legs now folded up beneath her, staring at them in dumb entrancement. They were indeed—it could now quite clearly be seen—identical twins; their wonderful beauty made this phenomenon even more than usually startling.
‘What do you think?’ one of them asked her.
‘We’ll do whatever you think best,’ said the other.
Flora watched as Janey struggled for composure. Not for anything would she have interrupted this scene, momentous in her daughter’s life; not for almost anything would she have forgone the singular fortune of witnessing it. In a moment Janey’s voice was heard, almost calm, almost collected, with a faint echo of her mother’s social manner, betraying only to Flora the hint of unease and excitement to conceal which she was striving. ‘Why don’t you wait for a while,’ she said. ‘And then, if William still hasn’t come back, you can go to the village.’
The beautiful youths got properly off their bicycles and leaned them against the low wall which half surrounded the swimming pool.
‘Yes, very well,’ said one, ‘we’ll do that—shall we?’
The other nodded and then stepped forward. ‘I’m James Hopetoun,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And this chap is my brother, John.’
Janey had now risen, and stood looking, still astonished, at their two faces. ‘I’m Janey,’ she said meekly. ‘Janey Beaufort.’
‘Janey,’ they said, together. ‘How do you do?’ She shrugged very slightly and then at last managed to smile.
At this moment the disregarded Nell—who had been sitting some distance away and watching the whole scene with gleeful interest—looked up at Flora’s window; catching sight of her mother she sank her head as far down as it could go between her shoulders and grinned deliriously, putting a hand over her mouth for further emphasis. God forbid that she should give Flora’s presence away! Flora put her finger silently to her lips and Nell, comprehending the injunction, ceased her grimacing and turned her gaze back to the group. The twins had by now engaged Janey in suitable chit-chat: was she too staying here—had she been here long—did she like it? ‘Oh,
yes
,’ said Janey. ‘It’s
pukkah.
’ The twins both laughed; one now glanced enquiringly across at the wide-eyed Nell, and Janey, following his glance, came a little to her senses. ‘That’s my sister, Nell,’ she said. ‘Nell: these are some friends of William’s.’
‘I know,’ said Nell. ‘I’ve been listening.’ The twins laughed again; Nell jumped into the pool and started to swim nonchalantly around, so showing them of how little account they were, and Janey—self-possession evidently growing, if slowly—invited them to sit down, which they did.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked; and they having assented, she made her escape.
Flora met her in the kitchen. ‘I see we have visitors,’ she said. ‘Who are they?’
‘Oh, just some friends of William’s,’ said Janey.
‘Ah,’ said Flora. ‘Schoolfriends, I suppose.’ Janey shot her a look.
‘Oh, hardly,’ she said. But of course, as transpired later, they were. It was while Janey—with some assistance from Flora—was getting their drinks that the Hunters all returned from the village; the twins were invited to stay for lunch, informed the whole party that they had cycled the five kilometres or so from their own
gîte
(where their parents expected their return
before nightfall
) on the chance that William might care to come on an excursion with them that afternoon—had he a cycle here?—and, further, informed everyone that
their
village would be
en fête
on the following Sunday, and that it might be worth the while of William, and anyone else who cared to, to show up there and see the fun. ‘Yes,
I’ll
come,’ said William enthusiastically. ‘
Absolutely.
’