Treasures of Time (13 page)

‘Yes,’ said Kate.

‘There would have to be tremendous alterations, of course. We would get in some really top architect.’

‘In ten or fifteen years’ time you’ll be over seventy, ma.’

There was a silence. ‘Possibly,’ said Laura coldly. She studied the bill. ‘I don’t remember having soup. I suppose we did. Tony Greenway has been on to me again. He is coming down at some point to have a look through Hugh’s papers, to see if there is anything that might be of any use for this programme. Nellie is very disapproving for some reason.’

‘I’m not surprised. I don’t like the idea of someone poking around in Dad’s stuff, either.’

‘Not private things. Not letters. Just his work things. Dig notes and so on.’

‘Hmnn.’

‘I should imagine he’s queer, wouldn’t you?’ said Laura.

‘Who?’

‘Tony Greenway.’

‘I’ve not the slightest idea. What does it matter, anyway?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t
matter
,’ said Laura. ‘It’s just that I notice that kind of thing about people. Nothing to look so prim about, darling, I thought your generation was so outspoken…’

In ten minutes, Kate thought, I shall be back in the museum. I shall work terribly hard all afternoon. This evening I shall see Tom again. I haven’t seen him now for – for five and a half hours.

‘… partly of course because one has always rather kept up with things, as a matter of fact I never really feel
of
any particular time in the way one is supposed to be
of
the time when one was young, whereas some people very much are, take Barbara Hamilton for instance not that she’d care to have it said but her I do see very much as a thirties person. Or your Tom.’

‘What about Tom?’

‘Oh, Tom is very much of now, isn’t he?’ said Laura with a laugh. ‘He really couldn’t be anything else. And now I don’t know about you darling but I have a lot to do, I shall have to rush.’

One of William Stukeley’s contemporaries claimed to have had revelations of life before birth; the account was somewhat mystical and while including a convincing description of being suspended in a ‘sea of greenish liquid’ referred also to angelic hosts and divine choirs. Tom’s earliest memory was dull: he was walking with his father along the tow-path of a canal near his home; squatting down to inspect something on the bank, he slipped and plunged one foot deep into the soft mud below; the mud sucked and clung, he shrieked, his father hauled him up and wiped him down. How old he had been, he did not know; judging by the remembered height of a concrete bollard at the spot, which was still there, he must have been about three – the bollard had towered above him.

Other memories were equally insignificant – and personal. Which led him to suspect that those autobiographies which so impressively tether the subject’s youth to the course of history are often either reconstructed or invented. If you grew up during a war, of course, or were in some other way inescapably linked to public events, then things would be simpler; you would indeed have shared some kind of collective experience and have bombs or loneliness or the proximity of famous people to prove it. But if you have the good fortune – or misfortune – to spend your childhood in peacetime in a politically stable country in modest, but not deprived circumstances, then memory has a certain timeless quality. One’s own life seems to run parallel to what is happening on the public stage, rather than being involved with it. Which, of course, is not the case. The winds of change blow on us all, conditioning a great deal more than how we dress or what we eat.

Which made it unsatisfactory that the sharpest recollections were in that sense mundane. When was it that his schoolboy self had hurtled down a hill, freewheeling on a bicycle, the senses ablaze at the sight of a female thigh rising and falling alongside? Not just any female thigh, either, but that of his first girl, Lorna Blackstock, and what has become of her, goodness only knows. The bike is still in the shed at home; a more durable relationship. And when was it, sometime before, that he had sat in the kitchen, on a static summer afternoon, hot, suspended in time – forever three o’clock, forever twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen – reading a novel in which a larger world is suggested. On the fringes of consciousness, unexperienced emotions and preoccupations lurk; flies sizzle against the window; Mum comes in and fills a saucepan at the sink.

Only in the more accessible past does history rear its head; one begins to read newspapers, hold opinions, take note. A Tom more ancestral to the Tom of today sprawls in a chair, listens to a bloke on the telly holding forth about the Americans in Vietnam, does not agree, argues subsequently with his father. And another Tom listens with a critical ear to discussion of incomes policy, of who gets how much for doing what, and sees that this is not a matter of abstract or academic interest, that one is going to be in there with the rest, and pretty soon too.

All of which has led, somehow, to the Tom of today, of now, who would probably be surprised by Laura’s claim, and possibly affronted. Few of us, after all, feel obliged to accept an affinity with – or take responsibility for – our own day and age.

Tom, walking down Tottenham Court Road, was thinking that Stukeley’s world – despite its physical discomforts – had a lot to offer a certain kind of person. His kind of person, he suspected. Given, of course, the right educational and social opportunities. A small cultural and intellectual élite largely known to one another; diversity of job opportunity. Of course, there was a lot that would not have done at all, but that could be said of any time. Undiscriminating acceptance of what you know will not do either.

He had decided to go down to Oxford for a few days; there was stuff in the Bodleian he needed to look at. He could get a bed off Martin and Beth Laker, out at whatever that village they lived in was called. Kate could come at the weekend and join him.

One would have to conspire with Mrs Lucas. Mrs Lucas would have to be asked – at some point when Laura was out – to investigate the garden shed to see if that old door was still there. And if it was, then Mrs Lucas would have to be persuaded to enlist her husband to give a hand with bringing it in and seeing if it could be transformed into a ramp to cover those pernicious steps down to the study. And if it could, then… Well, then the deed would have to be done – again in Laura’s absence – and one would have to face the consequences as best one could. The cold wind of Laura’s wrath would be mitigated by the pleasure of having got in there, of having by then gathered together at least the best part of what one wanted.

‘Next week, then,’ said Tony. ‘If that’s really all right with you, Mrs Paxton.’

‘Laura, please.’

‘Laura. That really is most awfully kind. I can’t tell you what a help it is on this kind of project to have so much cooperation. And I do want this to be a rather special programme. By the way, I had a nice outing the other day with your future son-in-law.’

‘Oh yes. Tom.’

‘Tom. I do think he’s such an interesting person. He’s very clever, isn’t he?’

‘Is he? Well, I suppose he has done rather well considering. I’ll see you next week, then, Tony.’

Tom said, ‘I’ve not ridden one for quite a while. How far is it?’

‘About seven miles.’

‘Christ! I hope I’ll make it.’

The bike, apart from being of the wrong sex, had chain trouble, and broke down somewhere outside Oxford. But Martin, of course, could fix that. He squatted by the side of the main road, cars and lorries flashing windily past, his black beard threatening to get tangled with the pedals, and sorted things out. Tom, watching, trying to stow his unsuitable briefcase more satisfactorily into the bike basket, thought with affection that of all his old friends, Martin was about the most stable. At twenty-five, he was a predictable extension of what he had been at eighteen. He had spent much of his spare time, as a student, fishing with a local angling club. Very coarse fishing. And going for long walks. And learning woodwork and welding and, as far as one could make out, some light engineering at evening classes at Oxford Tech. Reading English had been rather by the way. He was always tranquil, always contented, completely kind.

They turned off onto less frequented roads. Martin said, ‘By the way, we’ve got a new baby, I probably forgot to tell you. A girl.’

‘That’s three?’

‘Yes. Jessie goes to the primary now. Beth’s very much into vegetable dying at the moment. I’m building an extension at the back of the cottage that we can both use as a workshop.’

The Lakers’ visible means of support, it seemed, was ornamental ironwork, augmented by what Martin earned from craftsmanly assignments about the place; he was returning home now from a day spent on the restoration of some fifteenth century panelling in the hall of one of the Oxford colleges. He was building up quite an extensive word-of-mouth reputation as the chap to call in for anything requiring the kind of meticulous, solicitous, custom-built attention not available from the average builder. Tom said, ‘What are they paying you?’

Martin named a figure.

‘That’s ridiculous. It’s not nearly enough. Do you realize that place owns half north Oxford? And vast tracts of agricultural England?’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Martin. ‘Anyway, I like doing it.’

The cottage was in one of the aeroplane villages. Its original small centre of triangular green enclosed by a dozen or so stone cottages and farmhouses, church and school, was held now in the amoeba-like clutch of two or three extremely functional housing estates for the aerodrome personnel. The aerodrome itself, enclosed in wire fencing, glittered all around, its long low silver buildings catching the sun. Aircraft went about their business all the time, roaring low over the rooftops, vanishing with plumes of vapour into the Oxfordshire skies. They made Tom feel anxious but the Lakers seemed to have become impervious. Beth greeted him with a hug. She wore a long brown woollen skirt, blouse pinned at the neck with a Victorian brooch, and a black shawl; she might, he thought, have been an extra on the set of a lavish production of a Hardy novel; he had always liked Beth. They ate a large meal, drank the bottle of wine Tom had brought and ended up in the pub, with Martin and Beth taking it in turns to pop back across the road to see that the children were all right.