Passing On (22 page)

‘Had you forgotten?’ said Giles. ‘You hadn’t — oh good. And the weather forecast is promising — now, what do you fancy? A long walk? Some gentle carriage exercise and a pub lunch?’

‘I could make a picnic,’ Helen said.

‘What a lovely idea! Excellent! Should I collect you at about eleven, then? In that case… Wouldn’t your brother like to join us.

She hesitated. ‘I doubt it. But I’ll ask.’

‘I’m making a picnic. Giles Carnaby is coming. Do you want to come?’

‘No,’ said Edward without hesitation.

Giles drove decisively, with a hint of aggression; the car was powerful, and more fully furnished than any Helen had experienced. He put on a tape of Vivaldi and then switched it off because he said they had too much to talk about. It was he, in fact, who talked. He was a considerable talker, Helen realised.

What he said was informative if a touch inconsequential; you didn’t remember too much of it but the effect was cumulative. It was a kind of verbal display; listening, she was disconcertingly reminded of a bird idly preening, limbering up with bursts of song, stretching a wing … It came to her, in fact, with dry detachment, that Giles was a somewhat self-centred person.

Most of what he said pertained to himself. Occasionally he asked a question or sought an opinion; you had the impression that the answer had glanced off his surface. He appeared to listen with flattering attention; you also felt that possibly he had not heard.

Perceiving all this, she knew also that it made no difference.

None whatsoever.

They had decided to make for a small river valley in which there was an isolated church reached by a footpath across fields.

Helen had gone to some lengths over the picnic; the recipe book included a relevant section, she discovered. Flaked tuna with mayonnaise was new to her but she had managed and was quite proud of the results. Giles, when they had parked the car, dived into the back and produced a bottle of wine. They set off across a water meadow rich with buttercups and decorated with Friesian cows, like a television advertisement for some environmentally dubious product: petrol or fast cars. A heron rose from the river and flapped away into a clump of tall trees in the distance.

They inspected the church. Giles was not, evidently, much interested in churches. Helen, for a moment, came into her own; she pointed out salient features, found some medieval paving and a battered Norman font. Giles listened — or not — and then put a hand on her arm to steer her towards the door. ‘Come on, I’m starving — time to find an idyllic spot in which to eat.’

The river seemed the obvious place. They chose a point at which the bank reached steeply down to a pool, a slight bend in the course having eaten away a miniature beach on the far side.

It was thick with alder and willow; the water, green and shaded, flashed from time to time with coins of reflected sunlight.

‘Perfect!’ said Giles.

Helen unpacked the food. He poured the wine (he had remembered glasses, too). They ate and drank, sitting tucked into long grass that screened them from the river; they could hear the flow of it, and the occasional plop of a fish. I suppose, Helen thought, this is one of those moments in life that will live in the head. Whatever comes of it. Giles declared the sandwiches excellent. He ate everything she had brought, and then lay back, glass in hand. ‘What heaven!’

Helen said, ‘We’ve got company.’

On the far side of the river a dog appeared — a collie, leaping in excitement. Followed at once by a young man, dark-haired, sunburnt, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

The man, if indeed he realised they were there, paid no attention to them. He threw a stick into the river and the dog went after it in a flying leap, landing with a huge splash and paddling furiously, its black head sleek like a seal. It came out, shaking so that water spun off in silver spray. The man threw more sticks and it jumped again, ecstatic, diving and swimming, in and out. And then he sat down and stripped off his shirt.

Now he’s going in too,’ said Giles. ‘I wish he’d go away. Our peace is wrecked.’

The man pulled off his jeans and stood up. He was naked. It seemed to Helen that he must surely be aware of them; if so, they were of no interest whatsoever. She heard Giles say — embarrassed? — ‘A proper child of nature, evidently …’ The young man stood for a moment on an overhanging ledge of the bank, looking down at the water; the dog swam round and round below; the man’s body was flecked all over with light and the shadow patterns of leaves, so that he seemed some human extension of the place. He was spare, muscular, young. Then he threw up his arms and dived into the river.

He swam vigorously, ducking his head in the water and flinging back his wet hair. The dog circled him, barking. At last they both climbed out onto the little beach. The man dressed, put on his shoes, stood up, and then bounded up the bank into the field, followed by the dog. They were gone as suddenly as they had come. The water of the pool was still muddy and heaving where they had swum.

‘I don’t think I’d fancy it,’ said Giles. ‘Too much weed.’

It had been, while it lasted, electrifying; now, it was as though neither man nor dog had ever been. The shape and texture of the man’s body were still before Helen’s eyes, but as an image, a picture once seen. Giles reached for the wine and emptied the rest of it into their glasses.

She was intensely conscious of him. When his leg brushed against her it seemed to bum her. I’m not sure how much of this I can endure, she thought. She glanced at Giles; she had no idea if he felt anything, or nothing. He was sipping wine and talking about dogs. He had seen a sheepdog trial in Cumbria: amazing creatures. It seemed to Helen that they might sit there thus for ever. All my life, she thought, I have let things pass me by.

They were sitting side by side. She turned to face him. He stopped talking and, presumably, saw. Afterwards, she thought perhaps she had touched him, but could not remember. Giles leaned forward; he took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth. She felt his tongue. Then he drew back and looked intently at her. ‘Helen, my dear …’ he said. He sighed, ‘We mustn’t …’ He stood up. She heard herself say, ‘Why not?’

but if the words reached him he made no sign. He began to pack things into the picnic basket. He said, Now what I have in mind is a stroll to the end of the valley just to see what goes on there, then back to the car and home for tea, how about that?’

South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and Tim has sinus and won’t give you the time of day. So what’s new with you?’

South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and Tim has sinus and won’t give you the time of day. So what’s new with you?’

There was a spell of hot weather; mosquito larvae hatched in the stagnant pond on the far side of the Britches. Some children broke in and trampled down the surviving patch of ramsoms. A cat killed one of the young magpies. A decaying treestump sprouted a collar of saffron fungus of a kind Edward had never ‘I’m coming down for a night,’ said Louise. ‘Thursday. O.K.?

I’ve got to get out of London. The office can bloody do without me for a couple of days. Everyone else is swanning around the

seen before. He observed all these happenings but wrote: ‘Dogs: four including the one that got run over when only six months.

Tam is fifth. I have always wondered if mother left the front door open deliberately; he was a spaniel mixture, very nice.

Pickle was first — tan and white terrier, died of cancer at eight.

Best, too, in many ways. Then Jess — collie from Canine Defence, had to be put down eventually. Then the run-over puppy. Then Minnie — terrier type again, very loving, strayed a lot, died suddenly, probably ate something. Cats: the tabby next door, when I was a child — but of course that wasn’t mine. Then the ginger kitten I hid in the garden shed and mother found it and there was a monumental scene and Helen called her a beast; funny, I can hear it now, mother going on about the kitten and Helen suddenly exploding and mother’s face. It was Louise who said things like that, not Helen. The kitten lived to be nine, so came out of the whole business best, I suppose. Then Prince — black and white tom. Then no more cats because of problems with birds.’ He paused. He pushed his chair back and wandered around the room. Everything in it was old and shabby; little had been chosen by Edward himself. There were some World Wildlife Fund posters and a carving of a red-throated diver he had once bought in Orkney. There was a small case of books.

The candlewick bedspread on his bed dated from his schooldays; an area at the end was worn completely bare by the five dogs.

The rug on the floor had once been in his father’s study. A Victorian jug on the mantelpiece had been given him by Louise one Christmas. The dressing-gown on the back of the door had been bought by Helen to replace one twenty-five years old.

Edward returned to the desk. He wrote: ‘I cannot sleep at night. There is nothing to be done. The boy came again last week.’

He could not remember now the precise moment at which he had realised, once, time out of mind ago, that he found male bodies inviting and female ones not. He could remember a period of engagement with art — with Greek statuary and the young gods of Renaissance paintings, those bodies officially sanctified on the page or given sexual neutrality as museum displays. Here, you were licensed to admire without discrimination: the body as aesthetic object, pure and simple. Edward had come to realise that he found some bodies more appealing than others, and that the contemplation of them aroused feelings that had nothing to do with artistic appreciation. He made the connection between these bodies and those he saw all around him — clothed, partially clothed, or unclothed in the roaring maelstrom of the school changing rooms. He had had to conceal his revulsion at the creased and thumbed photographs handed round from desk to desk at school — those grey girls with their balloon breasts and gaping hairy forks. And presently revulsion gave way to indifference: he ceased to see the flaunted female bodies of advertisements and magazines because they had nothing to do with him, they were irrelevant. It was other images, now, that disturbed, from which he turned in anxiety and in guilt.

And, over the years, he had learned to avert his face, to sidestep, to damp down the fires. On the rare occasions when sharp eyes had penetrated his facade, when complicity had been invited, he had fled in panic. When, once, he had thought himself on the brink of an alliance for which he yearned, he was suddenly and shatteringly rejected. Thereafter, he turned inwards.

Five days after the picnic Helen received a postcard from Giles Carnaby. The picture was of a well-known local church. Giles said: ‘I can see I must brush up on my Perp and Dec if I am to keep up with you. Thank you for a gorgeous outing. Will be in touch very soon.’ No signature.

You don’t know where you are with him, do you? said Dorothy. From one week to the next. Blowing hot and cold like that. Time to put it to him, fair and square, I’d say. Mind, you may not like what you hear.

She loomed large these days, as in the weeks after the funeral.

Her airy presence filled the house. Above all, her comments rang in Helen’s ears.

‘Is Edward all right?’ said Louise. ‘There’s something distinctly odd about him lately, you know. I mean, even odder than usual.

He never was much like other people. And you’re looking a bit off-colour, to be honest. Seedy, as mother used to say. Not that I can talk — I’ve got almost as many spots as Phil. Maybe adolescence is contagious. God — what’s going on here?’

They were walking through the village. Louise wished to visit Dorothy’s grave, where the memorial stone was now in place. A confusion of lorries and cement mixers defaced the area just past the green. Helen explained that someone was converting the disused Baptist chapel into a house. They entered the churchyard.

She said: ‘Is Phil still being … difficult?’

‘Of course he’s being difficult. And Suzanne. Do you know, I am nostalgic for nappies and broken nights. I look in prams, with a soppy smile on my face. At the time, I thought one had hit rock bottom. There’s a bloody great silent conspiracy that goes on, and it’s the conspiracy of those who’ve had children against those who haven’t yet. What you don’t know, till you’re in it, is that it’s a life sentence. The other thing of course is that you haven’t got any choice anyway, because the yen to have children is about as basic as the yen to have sex. It’s all devilishly neat.

Contraception is merely cosmetic. You breed, willy-nilly, and lo and behold! you find life isn’t ever going to be the same again.

Even mother — even mother — I now realise, must have gone through some of this. Even mother must have had the odd twinge, incredible as it seems. And the whole process is made as simultaneously agonising and amazing as it could be — you labour to give birth, that’s the right word all right, and it’s about as ghastly as possible and then at the end there’s this absolutely wonderful feeling, that the conspiracy has never hinted at, when you hold it and see it and you suddenly realise there’s a whole new emotion you didn’t know anything about. Nobody’s ever mentioned that. And from then on you’re done — they’ve got you by the short hairs. You’re going to spend the next few months hanging over them with your heart thumping in case they’ve stopped breathing and the next few years after that stopping them committing suicide because a perfectly ordinary house has turned into a minefield of electricity and stairs and windows and boiling kettles. Every day the newspapers are telling you what happens to other people’s children. They’re being run over and raped and burnt; there’s leukemia and meningitis and muscular dystrophy; it’s all out there waiting to spring, if you’re fool enough to relax. But at the moments you wish you were shot of the whole thing you know perfectly well that it’s precisely because you couldn’t endure to be without it, now you know about it, that you’ve got to go through all this. You’ve lost your innocence. And then they get bigger and they start thinking and watching and you realise you’re fouling them up yourself too and there’s not much you can do about that either. And you know that at the same time as you could clout them you’d actually die for them also if it came to the point. It’s a fiendishly clever system for making sure the human race continues and most people over twenty never have a tranquil moment. God — what a spiel! I don’t blame you for looking edgy.’