The Death of Mr Love, page 35
The painter had added a touch to signify Killy’s life in India. A painting within the painting. The dull gleam of a gilt frame behind the sitter enclosed a Mughal tomb, its dome ruined, grass-covered and half-fallen, in a plain where a herd of wild asses grazed. No whim, this, but a reference to the power of the British, who ruled now where once Jamshed had gloried and drunk deep, and who shot tigers where Bahram the Great Hunter (where is he now, the wild ass stamps o’er his head?) had roved unchallenged. Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam had presumably been a favourite of Killy’s. I wondered if Killy knew that in the original Persian, the line about Bahram, the king who loved hunting the wild ass, contains a deadly irony. Gur, the wild ass, and nickname of Emperor Bahram, also means the grave.
Killy the Mighty Hunter, where was he? The British in their turn were gone, along with their allies. Crumbling, grass growing from its cornices, was the palace in Kumharawa where poor Nafísa Jaan was entombed. Killy’s portrait was itself grave-goods. I sat heavily back on the sofa. The things in the flat seemed suddenly sinister. A shrine, I had called it, but it was really a tomb, filled with the funerary treasures of a dead king. A tomb into which was sealed the high priestess of his cult, his daughter.
‘You only just caught me,’ said Phoebe. ‘Another couple of days and I’d have been away.’
Yes, and I’d caught her off guard. Surely that was consternation on her face, just for a moment, when she saw who it was. Now she was back to that lighthearted nonchalance which, I increasingly realised, was an affection. I had glimpsed her soul, superstitious, terrified that her mother’s spirit might be near. She had cried in the steamy Brighton café, when she told me about the last time she saw her father. In the hotel, she had become hysterical. But . . . perhaps she read the annoyance in my face because she said, ‘I was going to get in touch, Bhalu, when I got back. Promise. I have something important to tell you.’
‘Phoebe,’ I said. ‘Stop this now. If you have any respect for me at all, stop this play-acting.Why did you tell me you were married? Why didn’t you give me your address? Why take me to a hotel? And this place – is it safe? Why stay here? You obviously have money . . . Or perhaps,’ I said as the idea struck me, ‘you do have another home somewhere. Is that it? Mario said you’re away a lot. Where do you go? What do you do?’
She had a way, that I had noticed in the restaurant, of holding her wine glass with both hands, like a medieval drinking-cup, and peering over the rim with those startling eyes. She listened politely as the pent-up questions of several months poured out.
‘Why do I live here? Okay. First, because I always have. Next, because it’s cheap. Last, because I don’t plan to stay in England. One of these days I’ll have enough saved, then I’ll disappear and never come back.’
‘You’re always disappearing. Are you going to tell me where to?’
She didn’t reply.
‘This woman-of-mystery act is wearing a bit thin. You know everything about me. You’ve been to my house, you’ve met my wife. You asked me to go to India with you. Now tell me the truth! Where do you go to? How do you make a living? That hotel . . .’
‘Stop! Please!’ she said. She looked suddenly tired. ‘The hotel is owned by a friend. Natasha. An old friend. We were at the Slade together . . .’ She stopped and I waited, determined that this time she would explain herself.
‘So if I want to treat someone special, that’s where I take them. I never have to pay. At least, not with money.’
‘Not with money?’
She was going to say something but changed her mind. I waited. Her head drooped as if some spring within her had abruptly wound down.
‘Bhalu, when we were at the hotel, remember I said there was something I wanted to tell you? But I was afraid. In case I was the sort of person you wouldn’t want to know.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but you were talking about your mother’s diary. I can understand why you were afraid.’
‘It’s mixed up with that, Bhalu, but it isn’t that.’
I had no idea what she might be going to say. All sorts of wild ideas ran through my brain. Katy’s flat statement, ‘She’s the sort of woman who takes men for what she can get.’What sort of woman would take men to a hotel like that? Why did she not have to pay? What was she – some sort of call girl?
Phoebe went over and knelt before a chest of some red wood, streaked with crimson, around whose periphery carved dragons chased one another.
‘Come here,’ she said.
She opened the lid. Inside was a tray, divided into small square compartments, in the same strange timber. The chest had an incense-like fragrance, like the dry spice of a cigar box.
‘Is this some sort of sandalwood? I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It’s toon tree wood. The dragons are done in coconut.’
‘What is it?’
‘An opium chest. It belonged to my great-grandfather. How do you think the Killigrews made their fortune?’
More fantasies. Phoebe away for weeks at a time in Pakistan to collect opium? Drug smuggler? Opium dealer?
But it wasn’t lumps of opium that sat in the compartments. They were full of cassettes, neatly labelled in date order. There were also some packets of photographs. An idea occurred to me.
‘When you said, just now, that you didn’t pay with money . . . Is this how you pay? With things? Objects?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Every so often, I give Nat a painting.’
‘A painting?’
‘Yes, I’m sure I told you. I’m a painter.’
‘You said you’d tried painting but given it up.’
‘I never gave it up. It’s all I’ve done for a living, ever.’
She opened a packet of photographs, sifted through it and handed me a print. A large man with a fair beard gazed out at me.
‘This is Wulf. He’s a friend. He has a wonderful name, Beowulf Cooper.’
‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Ouch. It had jumped out before I could think. Instant reversion to type. Behaving like a jealous Indian. Nanavati. I had not felt like that about Katy.
‘Why do you leap to conclusions?’ said Phoebe. ‘Wulf is a good friend. Just a good friend. He runs . . . a sort of community. Up in Scotland. One can go there to rest, and think, and meditate . . . and paint. Look, I’ll show you.’ She pulled out more photographs. ‘It’s an island, just off the west coast. Not very big. There used to be a farm, but now it’s just the community.’
I was looking at a low green island rising out of a calm sea of intensest blue. The picture had been taken from a boat, and the lines of its wake were carved like ridges in blue wood.
‘There’s these few little houses,’ said Phoebe, pointing out a cluster of white boxes in a valley. ‘A boat calls from the mainland once a week, in good weather. In winter you have to send for one, which can be difficult, because there’s no phone. Wulf won’t have one.’
So that was why she had never phoned, nor given a number.
‘What happens in an emergency?’
‘We have a radio, which is kept locked up. Once, we needed it and it wouldn’t work. So we lit a fire on top there. Luinne Bheinne. The hill of laughter . . . It can also mean hill of anger.’
Another picture. Phoebe, in jeans and a thick sweater, standing on a hilltop. Beyond her the sea, a blue plate, stretching to an open horizon. ‘There’s a beach. You can’t see it. In the summer the sea is warm enough to swim in.’
‘What do you do up there?’
‘I paint. When I’ve got enough paintings, I come back down to London. There’s a little gallery in Cork Street which usually will take a few . . . It pays for this place and I can send Wulf some money . . . I stay here, a week. Perhaps two. At most a month. Then I’m off again.’
‘What else do you do?’ There was something she wasn’t saying.
‘Work hard. There’s lots to do. Cooking, cleaning, repairs . . . gardening. We grow a lot of our own food.’
‘Phoebe, what sort of community?’
‘Well . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is what I’ve got to tell you, so I may as well get it over with.’ But she stopped.
‘Go on, please. You can trust me.’
‘It’s a place where people can go, if they need to get away from things . . . if they are feeling disturbed. I mean, mentally ill.’
‘Okay.’ My mind was working like a propeller fouled in weed. ‘But you go there – why? To help Wulf?’
‘Bhalu, I go because I need to.’
We were both still kneeling by the opium chest. At least half a minute had passed and I had not responded.
Phoebe said, in a small voice, ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, Bhalu. I shouldn’t have told you.’
I put my arms round her. I held her. I hugged her. I cradled her. I said, ‘I’m here now. I will take care of you.’
Outside, the long summer evening was beginning to fade.
‘Since Mummy died, that’s when it started . . . If you’ve never had bad depression, Bhalu, you cannot imagine what it is like.’
‘Tell me then,’ I said. ‘Tell me, what is it like? I will help you get rid of it. I must.’
(God forgive my ignorant pomposity, I meant it.)
I am lying on Phoebe’s four-poster bed, the skylight above me a deep royal blue. Shadowy half-light in the vast room. No longer day, not yet night. A woman’s voice, Phoebe’s, close by my ear, says ‘. . . hiding in sullen sheets all day?’ A deep Scottish voice, equally close, replies, ‘What are you hiding from, in sullen sheets?’
PHOEBE: It’s me, isn’t it? Realising I am still me.
WULF: Who are you anyway?
PHOEBE: (Rather bitter laugh) A woman growing old without a lover. (Long pause) I know what love is. I knew when I was a child, when I was a girl, when I was young. I knew what love was . . .
WULF: And now?
PHOEBE: All those selves trapped inside one another, knotted and twisted up together . . . the little girl who doesn’t understand why Daddy sent her away. The art student who ran away to sea but never learned to paint like Gauguin, the daughter who tried to escape from her mother . . . but there’s no escape, is there? (He doesn’t respond. Loud lamenting of gulls. A distant murmur which may be the sea. One can imagine them, sitting on a hillside, perhaps the hill of laughter and anger, with the tape running.) This is a paradox. I sleep in the day because I can’t bear to be awake. At night, I daren’t sleep for fear of dreaming. I leave on my bedside lamp, then wake in the small hours, terrified to see the light shining on familiar things. Clock. Book. Glass of water. Ordinary things are monstrous . . . proof that everything is still as it was . . . (wind blowing across the microphone intermittently blots her out) . . . a kind of twilight between waking and sleeping . . . (wind is ruffianly). Then the whispering begins.
WULF: Who is whispering?
PHOEBE: You know who!
WULF: I know what you tell me. Who is whispering? (Long silence with wind noise.) . . . is whispering?
PHOEBE: (Another long silence.) My mother.
WULF: What does she whisper?
PHOEBE: Things I shouldn’t know. I don’t want to hear them.
WULF: What are you feeling?
PHOEBE: Terror.
WULF: What terrifies you?
PHOEBE: That she’ll come back. That I’ll see her.
WULF: Okay, so we’re back to this . . . (Female snuffling. Blowing nose.) What does she say to you?
PHOEBE: Do I have to?
(Wulf does not reply. Long silence broken by the sound of gulls.)
PHOEBE: She says she must go to India. This is what keeps running through my mind, the conversation I had with her, before she went. She asks me to lend her the money for her ticket and for a hotel. She says, ‘All I need is a cheap hotel.’
WULF: And what do you do?
PHOEBE: I give it to her. The money. In fact, I buy her ticket. She is gone about five weeks. Then a postcard arrives. It gives the date of her return . . . asks me to go to see her.
WULF: What happens next?
PHOEBE: I don’t want to talk about it.
WULF: You don’t want to, but you are going to because you are strong. You’re strong enough to look at this.
PHOEBE: No, no, look at me, I’m a fucking mess.
WULF: I am looking at you. I see an attractive woman, well groomed. I see a good, decent person. I see a friend for whom I have respect. No fucking way are you a fucking mess . . . What happens next?
PHOEBE: The date comes. Of her return. I know I should go to the airport, but I don’t. I feel horrible, mean, because she’ll be broke . . . she has to go all the way to Lincolnshire on her own. But I don’t go. I find something else that must be done. And in case you think . . . I wasn’t depressed then, just guilty and miserable as hell.
WULF: Okay. So what happens next?
PHOEBE: The day arrives. She must have returned. I know I should go to see her, but . . .
WULF: But?
PHOEBE: I put it off. I find excuses.
WULF: But you do go. I know. So what changes your mind?
PHOEBE: I remembered the dream. She told me she’d had a dream that made her decide to go to India. (Distress.) She was so lonely . . . I left her there, alone.
WULF: So you go. What happens?
PHOEBE: Yes, I go. At last, I bloody well go.
WULF: You sound angry. That’s good. This anger that you’ve been holding down, it turns into depression. Let it out! What happens next?
PHOEBE: I get in my car and drive. Every mile gets harder. While I’m far away, I can cut myself off, or cut her off. She’s there, in a sort of bubble. She’s always been there, she’ll always be there. She’s there in her house, reading, or cooking. She is so poor. I used to send her money, when I could – a bit here and there, sometimes a lot, hundreds of pounds. It would last for a while, but it was never enough.
WULF: You did what you could for your mother. You’re going to see her . . . You’re driving . . .
PHOEBE: Yes, I’m driving. I’m in my car. I’m leaving London, heading north. I’m leaving my world, entering hers. With every mile I can feel the misery growing, but . . . how can I describe this? It’s not mine – I’m already as unhappy as I can be. It’s hers, reaching out to me. The signs by the roads . . . A1: The North, Grantham 54 miles . . . are messages of loneliness from her to me. Gradually the whole landscape, and everything in it, become her messengers. The names of villages and towns I pass through accuse me. Bitchfield, that’s a good one, Ingoldsby, Humby . . . their name signs shout out as I pass, ‘We didn’t leave. We stayed here, near her.’ (Sound of crying.) ‘We didn’t abandon her.’
WULF: It’s painful for you. But don’t stop. You must go on.
PHOEBE: I can’t . . . I don’t want to see . . .
In her car, Phoebe is crying, remembering how her mother was when she was little. She is thinking, I’m her child, it’s my duty to look after her, and I left her on her own. Outside, the flat Lincolnshire levels are passing, big wide fields. From some, smoke is rising, stubble burning after the harvest. She can see for miles, and each redbrick barn, farm, pub she passes reminds her that just over the horizon, her mother is waiting. She is crying as she drives, her slim hand reaching down to change the gears, slowing down behind a tractor whose driver waves as she passes. She does not turn back.
At last, there is relief from the monotony of the fen, a green ridge rising ahead. The road winds across a marshy valley and climbs up to a village whose buildings are outlined against the sky.
She comes to the first houses. It’s a tiny place. Quiet. The car crawls past a pub, an old windmill. One more mile. Then ahead of her, she sees the opening in the hedge, the track that leads to her mother’s bungalow. She bumps along the pitted ground. Birds are quarrelling over a ploughed field to one side. The car stops, its engine shuts off. For a few long moments silence descends on the scene: the small building, uncared for, in a wild garden. Dark trees behind. Then the car door opens and Phoebe steps out.
Nothing has changed. The path to the door is covered by weeds. She can hardly make it out. Here, in great abundance, are the dandelions her mother claimed to eat. There are brambles up round the windows. Thickets of them, loaded with fruit. The windows behind are rotting, falling to pieces. Phoebe is in tears. She is ashamed. She knocks at the door, glances at her watch. No reply. The bell doesn’t work. She goes to look in a window. The drawing room is empty. Perhaps Sybil has gone out.
Phoebe stands for a moment, one hand on her head, wondering what to do. Then goes round the corner of the house, into a part of garden enclosed by a crumbling wall. Her mother’s bedroom window is guarded by a screen of brambles. Carefully, she pulls one thorny stem aside, another, peers through. Suddenly she is tearing at the brambles with her bare hands, fighting to reach the window. The brambles fly back, rip her arms. Her hands are bloody. A thick green stem rakes her across the cheek. She reaches the window. Puts her face to the glass. There is no one near to hear the sound that begins as a moan and becomes a howl.
The room is in green twilight. Phoebe can see the bed and, lying on it, the dark shape of her mother. She’s hammering at the pane. ‘Mummy! Mummy, wake up!’ Glass shatters and Phoebe’s hands are wearing crimson gloves. She reaches in . . . oh God . . . the smell . . . and the sound, a great buzzing. She wrenches the window open and climbs up. For a moment she wavers, seems to tumble inside.
Phoebe’s scarlet hands clutch a handkerchief to her mouth. Her deep in-sung breaths turn to sobs of terror as she approaches the bed. Then horrible, dry retching. Sybil no longer has a face. Where it had been is a black, shiny pullulating surface. Her daughter stands beside her. The front of her jeans is turning darker, a spreading patch of darkness. She squats down by her mother’s bed. Sybil’s face disintegrates. It explodes into a swarm of bluebottles. They settle on Phoebe, and she is slapping at them, screaming like a crazy woman.
