Treasures of Time (23 page)

‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘I am not seeing her. I am not writing to her. I am not furtively telephoning her. Truth to tell, I haven’t much thought about her. I did go to bed with her. I don’t expect I ever will again. But I can’t absolutely, unequivocally promise. There. Honester than that you cannot get. I love you. I find you more attractive than anyone else. But I have, I suspect, over-developed natural urges, and from time to time they get the better of me. I’m sorry about them.’

‘I see.’

‘You’ve bitten all your finger-nails off again.’

‘That’s a natural urge too.’

‘His parents?’ said Laura to Barbara Hamilton. ‘No, I haven’t met them, of course they’re rather a different type… Yes, Tom went to Oxford. Yes, it is a marvellous thing, the way everybody does nowadays.’ She stared in irritation at the lawn – distressingly unmown, what had become of Mr Lucas this week? – while two villages away Barbara talked of her daughter, Olivia, satisfactorily married to a young MP said to be tipped for an interesting career. Olivia had two pretty little girls and a house in London for which Barbara had devised and procured the décor and furnishings. ‘Yes,’ Laura said, ‘I imagine Olivia’s wedding must have been lovely, you are so lucky that she’s such a nice homey girl, Kate frankly is just not interested in that kind of thing. It comes of being clever, I suppose, it can’t be helped.’ Nellie, now, was propelling herself across the lawn, a gardening implement in her hand, stabbing infant thistles as she went. ‘I shall have to go, my dear, Nellie is in the garden needing her tea and as you know I am single-handed.’

She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. My wedding dress was heavenly, she thought, I can feel it now, that tissue-y ever so slightly rough feel, ivory raw silk, with a tiny, tiny waist and heart-shaped neck. I was so slim then. And Granny’s veil and diamonds. And my hair done at that place in Brook Street.

She loaded the tray and took it out onto the terrace. She said to Nellie, ‘I was thinking about our wedding, goodness knows why… Do you remember the awful photographer? And Mother ordering the wrong size cake from the caterers?’

I put the dress on; it is lovely; I am lovely. Everything is fuss and excitement; it is all for me. Mother says, ‘Stand still, dear, don’t fidget, I can’t get the veil fixed right. You’re not nervous, are you? There, that’s better…’ But I am not nervous: I am not anything. I don’t feel anything; this is the happiest day of my life and I don’t feel anything. I see the shiny black car in the drive outside, waiting, and father in his wedding clothes. Nellie comes into the room, looking funny in the sort of frock she doesn’t like wearing, and a hat. Hugh is in the church now. I think of Hugh, and nothing happens. There is not that delicious, confusing rush of something there was at first, there is nothing much at all. I see Nellie looking at me; she has a funny look – she is… she is
sorry
for me.

Laura stands at the mirror in the dress. The dress over which we have all been so much exercised, which has been debated and constructed and reconstructed and despaired of and delighted over. She looks beautiful. She looks like a Botticelli angel; her hair shines like water in the sun. Mother is doing something with the veil and Laura stares out of the window and as I come in she turns to see who it is. Her mouth is a little sad cross button like when she was a child: like when she was a child and had got the present she wanted for Christmas or birthday and then it had turned out to be not what she wanted after all. Her eyes are miserable, and a bit scared. She says, ‘You look nice, Nellie.’ I laugh: because I cannot remember Laura ever saying anything like that before and because I don’t think I look nice at all, in my tight, slippery blue silk dress and embarrassing hat. I want to make Laura laugh; I want to cheer her up; it is all wrong for her to be like this today.

Nothing is as it seems. Always, anyone would think, it is Laura who has had everything; as I get older, I see that it is not like that at all. Laura has very little, and sometimes she knows.

‘Opinionated,’ said Laura, ‘and cast a blight on an otherwise perfect afternoon. When it had been so sweet of John Barclay to take us there.’

‘It’s a point of view.’

‘Oh, Tom has points of view about everything. He’s that kind of person. It’s a pity. Slightly unpredictable, one can’t help feeling.’

‘Possibly.’

‘But he is attractive, that one has to admit.’ Laura studied the inside of her tea-cup and added in amendment, ‘Good-looking, I mean, of course. More tea?’

‘I think I’ll go in and get on with Hugh’s pottery sequence notes.’

Laura said, not looking at Nellie. ‘How is that going?’

‘Quite nicely, I think. But slow, mainly because I write at a snail’s pace. It is like trying to make do with someone else’s hand.’

‘I could help. I could – well, you could dictate or something.’

‘That would be nice.’

There was a silence. ‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘Well, we must do that, then.’ She stood up, bent to lift the tray. ‘They rang again about the television filming, some business to do with electrical things. I hope it is not all going to be a great bother.’

She went into the house. Nellie watched her go. She saw, for the first time, an absence of agility in her sister’s step, the slightest suggestion of a stoop. Somewhere out of sight, but not out of recollection, there hovered a little girl with straw-pale hair, tramping with anguished expression through the splintered fragments of a toy shop.

Born Oct. 17th 1952, Tom typed. He pondered, hesitated, filled in the details of his education, culminating in the First Class Honours Degree in Modern History (1974). So far so satisfactory. The typewriter (Tony’s, borrowed) was a marvel of modern technology. Japanese, compact but with wide talents; it could make columns, change its own ribbon, erase its (or your) mistakes. Internationally-minded, too; dollar sign, French accents. What it could not do was extend or improve on a curriculum vitae, which is a poor bare thing at the best of times.

Currently engaged in post-graduate work on the career of William Stukeley. Engaged also to be married to one Kate Paxton about whom one’s feelings veer from the proper ones of love and lust to worrying spasms of irritation and from time to time, indifference. All of which, of course, is irrelevant from the point of view of the University of the West Midlands which is looking for a Lecturer in History. The University of the West Midlands is also looking for an Assistant Lecturer in Film Studies and a Director of the Media Research Unit. The prospectus of the University of the West Midlands is quite a tome through which to browse; it makes interesting browsing, too, the diversification of higher education nowadays is remarkable, there is nothing they haven’t thought of, or not much. It comes as a welcome reassurance to stumble across such familiar old landmarks of learning as the metaphysical poets, the causes of the French Revolution and Romance Languages. Still around, for the time being at any rate. Meanwhile, the problem is how to convince the Chairman of the History Department in the University of the West Midlands that he would do well to spend his disposable cash on Tom Rider rather than anyone else.

Laura, told of this venture by Kate, is alleged to have asked where the West Midlands was. Enlightened, she went on to say that it was all rather horrid up there, she imagined, but she expected Tom would settle down all right. There is something rather splendid about Laura, considered with complete detachment. One is the richer for having known her.