A Temporary Life, page 13
I bang my arms against my chest.
‘Central heating: it’s what I’ve been saying about circulation. A night like this, a meal inside you.’ He waves one arm above his head. ‘You see how that college undermines you. I suppose you’ve got the same sort of thing at home as well.’
He gets up quickly, crosses the room, and pulls open a door which, until now, I haven’t noticed. From the shadows he hauls out what, at first sight, appears to be an electric fire. He sets it down beside the hearth.
It’s a metal box. A large red cross is painted on the lid.
‘We keep our medical concoctions, you know, in here.’
Stooping to the light he rummages about.
‘Here it is.’ He holds up a bottle. ‘A drop of this’ll set you right.’ He reads the label. ‘“For all colds, flu, or disturbances caused by inclement weather.”’
He takes my glass.
A stream of yellowish-looking liquid is poured inside.
‘Drink that, and you won’t complain about the cold again.’
He watches me avidly as I take it from his hand.
‘Don’t gulp it. You can savour the taste as well as enjoy the benefit,’ he says.
I swallow it down. There’s a bitter, acrid taste against my tongue, then a burning sensation somewhere in the throat. A moment later it’s as if my stomach’s being removed: there’s a tearing, convulsive sensation somewhere in my chest.
‘I can almost taste it now myself.’
He replaces the bottle inside the box.
I begin to gasp.
‘We brew it up from fungi, and from toadstools you can find in almost any wood. You’ve got to know which ones to pick. Some native toadstools, of course, are toxic. One bite, you know, and you can drop down dead.’
He carries the box back to the cupboard in the wall.
‘Nature provides its remedy for almost anything,’ he says.
He comes back to his chair; there’s a burning sensation now around my neck; it spreads out to my arms and then, more certainly, with a sudden rush, towards my legs.
‘Brandy, you see, which has the same effect, is an intoxicant. You could say, in the end, it does more harm than good. But that,’ he gestures to the cupboard door, ‘you could drink as often as you like. You could enjoy it as a beverage, as well as a remedy for feeling cold. You’ve probably caught it in the modelling room. If the models didn’t demand those ridiculous fires they’d all feel the benefit, I’m sure of that.’
I sink down in the chair. Movement now, except from a horizontal position, seems virtually impossible. I can only see Wilcox through a kind of a haze.
‘What I might have checked was how long we’ve had that remedy in stock. You’re supposed to renew it every year. It must be three or four years old, at least. On the other hand,’ he says, and looks across, ‘it’s had more time to mature than most. It’s always a benefit, with these medicines, if they’re never rushed. Life nowadays,’ he adds, ‘prohibits remedies, of course, like that. It’s got to be a needle, or a pill, or rushing off to some hospital bed. In the old days nature made the pace; now we’re governed, like Kendal’s devices, by electric current and little else.’
I’m aware of some further conversation from the other side of the empty fireplace; then, some time later, I find I’m standing in a studio. Its walls are white, a white curtain is drawn across a skylight immediately above my head; to one side a flight of steps leads up to a wooden gallery on which are stacked a number of canvases, their sides lettered and numbered like the spines of books.
Wilcox has evidently gone to some trouble to bring me here; I have a vague recollection of keys being turned, bolts being drawn and chains removed; of lights being switched on brighter than those inside the house; we’ve crossed, to get here, a stretch of garden: the night air alone, as if fulfilling Wilcox’s claims for it, has – relatively – brought me to my senses.
‘It’s really why I asked you back. It’s not everybody, you know, I let in here.’
An old type of studio easel on castors occupies the centre of the floor. A rectangular-shaped canvas, set vertically, and almost as tall as Wilcox himself, is covered by a paint-flecked sheet.
‘Most of my compositions I keep up here.’ He gestures to the gallery overhead. ‘This is the one I’m working on at present.’
He removes the sheet.
Several overalled figures are standing round a hole: there’s a pile of sand, a cement-machine, a lorry loaded with bricks, a telephone pole, a road, made up of cobbles, a house, with a man standing at a door and a woman at the gate, stooping to a pram, and, in the sky, an aeroplane is passing by, leaving behind it a streak of vapour. On the branch of a tree which frames the picture a bird is standing with its beak wide open; on closer inspection, amongst the leaves, I can make out a nest containing three as yet unfinished eggs.
‘I’m just doing those,’ he says. ‘Blackbird’s. The blue matches the blue of the mother’s dress.’
Faint lines on the barer patches of the canvas indicate that the picture itself has been squared off; each workman is carefully posed against the hole, the stitches on each overall drawn in, the wedges of clay beneath each boot, the rime of dirt beneath each nail. One of the workmen smokes a cigarette: ‘Fight Cancer’, the lettering on a poster, is outlined on a wall beyond his head.
‘It’s a scene from contemporary life,’ he says. ‘Nothing you could get in a photograph, or on a film. The composition, as you can see, is a conception in itself: it’s all determined, nothing arbitrary, or accidental. There’s nothing electric, you know, in that.’
A pool of water has collected amongst the cobbles: it reflects not only the leaves of the tree, the bird, the face of one of the workmen, but the aeroplane itself.
‘A symbol of life and death.’
He gestures to the canvas.
‘The puddle?’
He shakes his head.
He points irritably to the workman with the cigarette: his head, I realize, is reflected in the puddle.
‘The bird gives out a warning.’
His finger, short, square-ended, hovers above the open beak.
‘The messenger.’
His finger moves up towards the plane.
‘Between heaven and earth. While up above.’ He looks across. ‘The harbinger of death.’
‘The plane.’
‘The bringer of catastrophe.’ He nods his head.
‘It looks like a passenger plane to me.’
‘It’s a symbol, merely, of domination from the air,’ he says.
Perhaps the distillation of toadstools and fungi moves into a second cycle of effect.
I begin to smile. I can see Wilcox’s face begin to redden.
‘A picture within a picture. You can’t get that, except with art. There’s not any fortuitous effect anywhere in that picture. It’s all measured out. The product of the will.’
He staggers back, his foot caught in the sheet; he drags it out from between his legs.
‘You’ll find it coming back. When these let-it-happen boys have had their day. You’ll find the old values coming through. You’ll find the public growing disheartened by these ephemeral, fortuitous effects that people like Kendal, for instance, try to produce. They’ll come back to pictures by people who put down exactly what they see, but in compositions created by good taste, tradition, by the instinct of the eye and hand, and by the intelligence which is the natural and inevitable outcome of a good digestion.’
Only seconds later, it seems, we’re standing in the yard outside; I can see the house several feet away, the casement windows, the plaster and timber-work, the edge of the thatch and have a vague recollection, before we finally emerge, of Wilcox, panting slightly, climbing to the gallery and bringing down several of the canvases stacked up there. I have an impression of other workmen gathered round a hole; of fishermen at a quay unloading fish; of a male figure with an arm upraised, one leg forward, one leg back; of soldiers, with tears in their eyes, gathered round a grave: now, however, Wilcox is looking at his watch. A barn-like structure behind us has just been locked.
‘You’ll have to be going,’ he says. ‘It’s getting late. The last bus goes, I should think, in twenty minutes. You’ll just have time to walk to the stop.’
‘Aren’t you going to drive me back?’
‘I’ve just put the car away, old man,’ he says.
I’ve no recollection of this at all; certainly the car has vanished from the front of the house.
‘The bus gets you there in half an hour. It’s a damn good service, I’ll grant you that.’
He turns to the drive.
‘I’d better say goodnight. To your wife,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, I’ll say it for you,’ he says. ‘She’ll be in bed.’
I splash through several puddles as we walk to the gate.
‘I’ll leave you here,’ he says. ‘You can see the road. Straight ahead, then over to your right.’
‘How far’s the stop?’
‘About a mile.’
He slaps my back.
‘It was good of you to come.’
As I turn to the gate he suddenly calls, ‘Is it true, by the way, about your wife?’
His figure’s several feet away, scarcely visible beneath the trees.
‘This hospital she’s in: it’s not one of these for mental cases, then?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You mean she’s mad.’
‘More sane,’ I tell him, ‘than you or I.’
‘She’s not been certified, then?’
‘She volunteered.’
‘We should have been informed.’ He rubs his face. He comes no closer in the dark. ‘A thing like that: you can never tell.’
‘She’s well looked after, on the whole,’ I say.
‘I mean the staff we employ at the college,’ he says. ‘It reflects on us, a thing like that. We’ve a responsibility to the students, after all,’ he adds.
‘I’ll see,’ I tell him, ‘what the hospital says.’
‘I’d have a word with them, if I were you.’
‘I will.’
‘And explain the situation. They’ll understand. They’ve dealt with cases like this before.’
‘I’ll get onto them,’ I tell him, ‘right away.’
‘Mention my name,’ he says, ‘it could do the trick.’
His feet crunch off along the drive.
I turn to the road.
I find no stop at all that night. I pass occasional trees, animals in fields, an empty house. Finally, I reach the garage. The lights are out, the doors are closed.
I hitch a lift on a passing lorry. Dawn is breaking by the time I reach the town; perhaps the toadstool and fungi distillation moves on into some third and more devastating cycle of effect: as soon as I reach my room I fall asleep and a day and another night have passed before I wake again.
2
‘I thought I might drop by.’
She’s wearing a black fur hat and a black wool coat, standing at the door, a parcel in her hand.
‘A man with a red moustache let me in downstairs.’
She holds up the parcel.
‘I’ve just been shopping.’
‘Come in,’ I say. I step aside.
In her other hand is a leather bag; it’s like a pouch, with a metal clasp.
‘It’s hard to find.’ She looks around. ‘But you’ve something of a view,’ she says.
She crosses to the window.
‘Isn’t that the village you can see from here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘With a pair of binoculars you could see the house.’
‘I’ve never tried.’
‘I’m sure you haven’t.’
She turns to smile.
‘I got your address, you know, from Bec.’
‘Does she know you’re here?’
She shakes her head.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I’d like some tea.’
I go through to the kitchen: I can see her through the door examining the furniture, the chairs, the table.
‘Is the furniture yours?’
‘It was already here.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘About two months.’
‘Do you like it here?’
‘Not really. No.’
She comes to the door.
‘Could I take this off?’
She unbuttons the coat.
She disappears, as she takes it off, around the door.
When she reappears the coat has gone. Her dress is dark, buttoned at the throat and wrists.
‘Can I help you with the tea?’
‘It’ll be all right.’
‘Has Leyland been in touch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘He talks of nothing else.’
‘I bet.’
She comes through to the kitchen.
The window looks down to the back of the house, to the tiny yard and, beyond that, the backs of the houses in the adjoining street. Above the roofs rears the blackened edifice of the cathedral spire, its tall, dog-toothed cone surmounted by a golden cockerel.
In the yard below a man in a white string vest and white shorts is exercising himself with a metal bar.
‘Was the man who let you in dressed like an athlete?’ I ask.
‘He was, now you mention it,’ she says.
‘With bright red hair.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You can see him here.’
She goes to the window, looking down.
‘That’s him,’ she says. She begins to smile. ‘Do you know who he is?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Haven’t you seen him before?’
‘Not dressed like that.’
She presses her head to the pane. She laughs.
‘Who else stays here, in any case?’ she says.
‘There’s a couple above. A couple below.’
‘They used to be family houses, I suppose,’ she says.
‘Though what they do,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve no idea.’
She goes back to the room; I follow her through.
‘Won’t you have some too?’
‘I’m recovering from a concoction I had at Wilcox’s,’ I tell her, ‘the other night.’
‘The Principal,’ she says. She laughs again.
‘He warned me off.’
She takes the cup as I lean across.
‘He thinks I might jeopardize the plans he has.’
‘For what?’
‘For improving the college with your husband’s cash.’
‘I didn’t know he’d had any money, then.’
‘He probably hasn’t.’
‘Sounds like another of Neville’s ideas,’ she says.
‘I shouldn’t tell Wilcox that,’ I say. ‘He’s built up a brand new school already.’
‘It must be something he said when he first took Bec.’
‘There’s nothing in it, I suppose,’ I ask.
‘With Neville,’ she says, ‘you can never tell.’
She crosses her legs.
‘Do you want a fag?’
‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘I’ve come without.’
‘I’ve almost given it up,’ I say. ‘I have instant recoil, with Wilcox, whenever I get one out.’
‘Does he disapprove of smoking, too?’
‘Of almost everything,’ I say.
I hold the light.
‘So Wilcox invited you out,’ she says.
‘I paid for his petrol when his car ran dry; we shared a potato, a piece of cheese, of which he and his wife had the larger part, three apples and, between Wilcox and myself, a jug of toddy – comprised primarily of unsweetened lemon – and finally, to ward off the rigours of his unheated house, a distillation of fungi and the common woodland toadstool which I alone was privileged to imbibe …’
She begins to laugh: she holds her hands against her cheeks.
‘On top of which he showed me all his pictures. If you want an investment you’ve got a starter there. The latest looks about a century old.’
She shakes her head.
‘He’s quite worried about you, in any case,’ I tell her. ‘He thinks I might undermine his position vis-à-vis the college, not to mention your taste in pictures.’
‘I better be on my guard,’ she says.
She gets up from the chair.
‘It’s quite cosy up here. High above the world.’
‘And cold.’
She looks across.
‘Doesn’t the fire work?’
‘It’s supposed to be gas. The pressure’s so low it’ll hardly light.’
‘Have you told the landlord?’
‘It’s to do with the house. In a year or so they’ll pull it down.’
‘And all those concrete towers go up,’ she says.
She gazes out to the view below.
‘You can see the road across the heath. I’m sure those are the trees behind the house.’
She turns her head.
‘Do you mind me coming?’ She begins to laugh.
‘I don’t mind you coming at all,’ I say.
‘Do you have a bed?’
I gesture through.
‘Would you mind if I look?’
‘You can try it out, if you like,’ I say.
‘That I’m not sure of,’ she says and laughs.
‘The chance might not come again,’ I say.
‘Oh, it always comes. It’s just a question of convenience,’ she says.
‘It’s convenient to me: but then, I’m familiar with it, I suppose,’ I tell her.
She sits on the edge. She crosses her legs.
‘Well? Do I have to beg for encouragement?’ she says.
‘What I don’t like are the headaches,’ Lennox says. He leans back in the chair behind his desk. ‘They haven’t diminished during the last few weeks.’
‘Has she been X-rayed?’
‘It’s nothing organic,’ he says. ‘I’m sure of that.’
He fingers his nose. His hair is grey. His eyes are blue, his cheeks bright pink, thin-veined, half-bloated, red. By all accounts, at Christmas, he plays the part of Santa Claus, visiting the wards, giving out presents, singing carols with a choir of nurses, receiving visitors personally behind the snack-bar in the reception wing.
‘It’s more a symptom of stress,’ he says.
