A Pure Clear Light (8 page)
‘I suppose you noticed,’ said David very modestly, ‘that my series is not so much about the Lloyd’s thing
as such
, as it is about the—ah—Golden Calf.’
‘The Golden Calf,’ said Lizzie and Simon together.
‘Yes,’ said David. ‘Do you know that painting, by Poussin?’
‘Oh, of course,’ they said together. Well, obviously
of course.
It’s in the National Gallery.
‘Well, that’s it, really,’ said David, still looking modest. ‘That’s what my series is really about.’
‘Have you got Moses and the tablets in there?’ asked Simon.
‘Any day now,’ said David.
‘This really
could
be a biggie,’ said Lizzie. ‘And I think we should go to Scunthorpe. Well, I’m going anyway, actually, because I’m producing a prog about the festival for Channel 4.’
‘Busy Lizzie,’ they murmured admiringly.
‘So, David—if you think you could be ready willing and able to take part, say, in the big debate, which is going to be
bloody
, enemies will be made
for life—
have a think about it and let me know, and I’ll have a word with Nicola and see if you can be slotted in.’
‘Who’s Nicola?’
‘Nicola is my man in Scunthorpe.’
‘Sounds rather like a woman.’
‘Yes, she is, as a matter of fact.’
‘As long as she thinks like a man.’
‘Is there any other way? Obviously, she thinks like a man.’
‘Rationally.’
‘Logically.’
‘Purposefully.’
‘And pragmatically.’
‘Isn’t it nice now that we’re all equal and have sorted out all our differences?’
‘It’s wonderful. I was saying to Sarah only the other day, I don’t even notice she’s technically a different sex from me any more, hardly.’
‘It’s funny, but I said the exact same thing to Alf just the other night.’
‘The odd thing is I’ve absolutely never said that to Flora.’
‘Didn’t you even think it?’
‘I don’t remember doing so. Very odd.’
‘You’re out of touch with your thoughts.’
Simon had to think fast, very fast. Mustn’t let that ping-pong ball fall off the fountain. ‘It’s just that I don’t appreciate Flora properly,’ he said. ‘That must be what it is.’ And to his surprise, he realised that he’d just, quite inadvertently, spoken the plain truth.
In vodka pravda.
He laughed happily. ‘I suppose I should make a point of telling her sometime pretty soon,’ he said.
‘Say it with flowers.’
‘Should I?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Gardenias,’ said Lizzie. ‘She deserves nothing less.’ And she too was, as inadvertently, telling the truth: but she could not know it, and did not, therefore, laugh, happily or otherwise. ‘But back to our onions,’ she said; and they left the ping-pong ball to fall soundlessly into the basin of the fountain, and began to discuss with the maximum seriousness David’s—and Lizzie’s—and, all going well, Simon’s—new project, a six-part drama series all about the Lloyd’s thing. Or, rather, the Calf,
même
. A
biggie.
‘I’ve been drinking too, actually.’
‘It suits you.’ He began kissing her and then suddenly stopped. ‘Who have you been drinking with?’
‘A journo.’
‘Which one?’
‘Called Maclise. Alexander of that ilk.’
‘Alex. Everyone calls him Alex.’
‘It’s Alexander on the byline.’
‘Alex everywhere else.’
‘What a lot you know.’
‘He’s a friend of ours.’
‘Rather attractive, I thought.’
‘Think again, or I’ll kill you both. What were you doing drinking with him anyway?’
‘Another favour to Georgie. Alex is writing a book about the Lloyd’s thing. He wanted some dope.’
‘Yes, Alex likes his dope, as I recall.’
‘So he’s a friend of yours. What a small world it is.’
‘I tell you, London is hicksville. Everyone knows everyone, sooner or later.’
‘New York is probably just the same.’
‘I dare say that soon everyone in New York will know everyone in London, and vice versa.’
‘That will be fun.’
‘Are you sure? I’m not. The Atlantic conurbation. Horrible.’
‘You must try to be more modern.’
‘Personally, I blame the fax machine. Communication these days is just too damned easy.’
‘I got a fax from Albie today.’
‘Quite a day you’ve had all round. How’s Albie?’
‘Albie’s okay. Asked after the cat.’
‘Has that cat got a name?’
‘Albie called him Solomon. I usually call him Puss.’
‘Puss is more suitable than Solomon.’
‘I think so. Nice and soft.’
‘Puss. Come here, puss. No, not you, Puss, you stay where you are. You’re not the one I want.’
Oh, and how he wanted. It was a sort of paradise, all right.
Later, ‘It’s time I buggered off,’ he said.
‘If you must.’
‘I’ll call you.’
‘You do that.’
He went downstairs and into the street and flagged down a cab. Oh fuck, he thought, I should have done something about those gardenias. He’d really meant to buy Flora some gardenias: call it superstition, if you like. It had seemed like an essential thing to do: even though it hadn’t been his own idea; even if it had been said as a joke. Gardenias: well. Not exactly chrysanthemums, were they? He’d see to it in the morning—that was the ticket. First thing. They’d probably have to fly them in from Hawaii. So much the better! Such was life on the fine straight line!
Maggie Brooke—Alison’s sister-in-law, actually, not that it signifies— Flora’s partner, whose children were both at boarding school, stayed at the atelier until closing time every day, bless her, so that Flora could get away in time to pick up the two younger children from their schools. Janey could get herself home, but she was strictly forbidden to loiter. She had a key, in case she got home first; Flora didn’t like it, but what else could she do? She never loitered either, more than the traffic dictated. Janey didn’t mind, but she always jumped up when she heard the Fiat, and opened the front door to them. And then said casually, Oh, hello Mummy, and indifferently lifted her cheek to be kissed, while Nell and Thomas rushed past her into the house, shrieking.
But today she stood at the top of the steps, crying ‘Hey, Mum! There’s a box here for you!’
And Flora said, ‘A box? What sort of a box?’ A
box
?
‘I don’t know,’ said Janey. ‘It’s in the fridge. Mrs Brick left it there with a note.’
A box, in the fridge. ‘Goodness,’ said Flora. ‘Let’s go and see.’
She opened the refrigerator and there, indeed, was a box. ‘Dear Mrs Beaufort, this box come for you today p.m. Have put it here on account perishble being flours. Yours, M. Brick.’
Flora looked at the name on the box. ‘Ooh la la,’ she said. Nell and Thomas had by now received the vibrations of mystery and excitement and were gathered to witness the revelation. ‘Open it, Mum,’ said Thomas.
‘You know,’ said Flora, ‘I do believe I will.’ And she did.
A velvet-thick fragrance rose in great white plumes, suffusing their souls with an ecstasy almost unbearable—and yet never quite sufficient: like an ambrosia the desire for which grows with the drinking thereof.
‘Oh!’ cried Nell.
‘Ah!’ cried Janey.
‘Oh, what
is
it?’ said Thomas.
‘I think I must be dreaming,’ said Flora.
Gardenias; gardenias, in the plural. Several of them, nestled creamily together in a ravishing little bouquet, surrounded by their green leaves and tied with a pale green satin ribbon. ‘Oh!’ said Flora, gingerly picking up the box and smelling the flowers from close to. ‘I can hardly bear it.’
‘Let us smell too,’ the children cried.
‘But be very careful,’ said Flora; ‘you must never touch gardenias, or they go brown. Thomas, can I trust you? Very
very
careful, darling.’ The children very carefully smelled the flowers.
‘Oh, it’s blissful,’ said Nell.
‘It’s
pukkah
!’ said Thomas.
‘Who sent them?’ said Janey. Flora picked up the card.
‘I wonder,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Don’t ever leave me . . .’ it said, ‘. . . for a day longer than a month. S.’
‘Who sent them?’ said Nell.
‘Just a chap I know.’
‘Who?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘Not Dad,’ said Janey. ‘Not
Dad.
’
‘Why not?’
‘Not Da-ad,’ said Nell.
She and Janey were both giggling. ‘Not
Dad
,’ they cried, dancing about and shrieking.
‘Not Dad!’ cried Thomas, mystified altogether, but determined to join the party. ‘Not
him
!’
They didn’t get over it for days; not until the gardenias had turned—as, alas, they must—quite brown, and were all (except one) thrown away. Nell got the piece of ribbon, because she asked for it first, but Thomas got the box. Janey, of course, was too old to care about that sort of thing.
It wasn’t going to be quite so easy from now on, at least for a time.
‘Poor darling, you look knackered.’
‘You know, to tell you the plain truth, I
am
knackered.’
‘This is the first time this week that you’ve come in before midnight. The children haven’t seen you to speak of for days.’
‘You know the form, Flora.’
‘Is it nearly finished?’
‘Yep. Nearly finished. No more late nights.’ What the hell was he going to do? There was some barbed wire across the fine straight line, to be stepped over very very carefully, leaving no telltale scratches.
‘Louisa wondered if we might dine next Friday, can I say yes?’
‘Sure. Say yes.’ Why not.
That was the least of it. He’d been sleeping in the dressing room since Flora’s return from France—he usually did that anyway when he was working late; she was a nervy sleeper. It was time to return to the deep peace of the marriage bed: but actually it was peaceful no longer: it was the place above all others where he was bound to see (if only to glimpse) that there did exist the question of right and wrong. It might not truly be pertinent: he might inhabit a sort of paradise beyond its writ: but in that place, where Flora was so near to him—near to him spiritually even more overwhelmingly than she was physically—he couldn’t but see that there remained, theoretically, such a question. That it could, theoretically, be pondered, by another if not by him. That he could, theoretically, be convicted as a malefactor. By Flora, for example. This was a piece of barbed wire which would take a lot of stepping over.
Flora was stitching: tapestry seat-covers for the dining-room chairs. She would tell you laughingly that she expected to complete the last one by the year 2000. No, not flowers: seashells. A different kind for each chair. The scallop, the conch, the nautilus…resting on the sand, with the wide ocean’s wild depths in the background; and sometimes a cloud or two in the sky above. ‘Flora, you are clever!’ ‘
And
industrious.’ ‘It’s terribly good therapy, actually.’ She stuck her needle in the side of the canvas and rolled it up. ‘Shall we go to bed?’ she said.
‘Let’s just have a nightcap first,’ said Simon.
He rose from his semi-supine sprawl and fetched the bottle of Armagnac which Flora had brought back from France. ‘Just a very tiny one,’ she said. He handed it to her and she sipped carefully. ‘A thimble full of the warm south,’ she said.
He laughed, and took a much larger mouthful. He smacked his lips. ‘These frogs are so bloody clever sometimes that they leave the rest of us standing,’ he said.
‘But we had the Empire,’ Flora pointed out.
‘They had an empire too.’
‘We had
the
Empire.’
‘Yes, it’s true, isn’t it? Pretty amazing, really.’
‘Dreadful, of course.’
‘Oh yes,
dreadful.
Never live it down.’
‘But pretty fabulous, all the same.’
‘Yes, that’s it. Literally, metaphorically, fabulous. You missed some amazing cricket while you were in France, by the way.’
‘Not quite. William and his friends kept track on the World Service and then regaled us in some detail.’
Simon laughed. ‘One thing the frogs didn’t think of,’ he said happily. ‘Couldn’t have thought of. Not them. Not in a zillion years.’
‘Not the cucumber sandwiches
either
,’ Flora said.
‘We’re all right really, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, we’re all right
really.
’
‘Shall we go up?’
Flora put down her glass. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Simon climbed into bed beside her: he had showered; his hair was still damp. He put his arms around Flora. She smelt of verbena. The barbed wire was behind him. ‘I love you,’ he said. It was true.
‘Do you love me?’
‘Do I
what
?’
‘Love me.’
‘Good God. You know how I feel about you.’
‘Do I?’
‘If you don’t then you haven’t been here. I’ve been fucking a ghost, all these weeks. Here, ask the cat. Ask Solomon. How do I feel about your mistress, Puss?’ The cat sat quite still, staring at them steadily. ‘You heard him,’ Simon said. He sat up and helped himself to one of her cigarettes. ‘Love,’ he said. ‘You want love, too, do you?’
‘I didn’t say so.’
‘Then why did you ask?’
‘Simply out of interest.’
‘Your interest was frivolous, then.’
‘Gosh, sorry. I didn’t realise that I was expected always to be serious.’
‘About some things, yes. As you’d expect me to be.’
‘You’re being very masterful this evening.’
‘You’ve provoked me into it. Perhaps that was your intention.’
She thought for a while. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I really wanted to know what you think of me. As a person. Sort of thing.’
‘It was my understanding that you wanted to be fucked stupid, and nothing more. In fact I think you said that there can
be
nothing more.’
‘It’s true that I don’t believe that people can give each other anything more—not without setting up some sort of horrible dependency; and then goodbye autonomy. Of course. But that doesn’t mean that one has no impression of the other person, of their character, their personality, their moral worth, etcetera. I mean, you must know me quite well by now—don’t you?’