‘Who do you …?’ But Sister Wray was already talking to Cale’s back.
12
It’s one of the greatest mistakes of the cultivated person to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same colour everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.
As for Cale’s heart, it was as much a sophisticated as a savage thing. No grand master in the game of chess possessed the subtle skills that Cale had at his command when reading a landscape – how to defend or to attack it, or to adjust that reading in a second because of a change in the wind or rain, how to finesse the known and unknown rules of a battle that can be altered by the gods at any time without consent or consultation. Life itself, in all its horror and incomprehensibility, plays out in even the simplest skirmish. Who was cooler or more intelligent than Cale in this most terrible of human trials? But this prodigy of the complexity of things rushed down the stairs, heart bursting with hope: She’s come back to throw herself on my forgiveness. Everything will be explained. I’ll turn her down and threaten her. I’ll treat her as if I can’t remember her. I’ll wring her neck. She deserves it. I’ll make her weep.
Then sanity of a kind returned: What if it’s not her? What if it’s someone else? Who else could it possibly be? She wants something. She won’t get it. And on it went, the madness breaking inside him as both his wild and intelligent hearts contended with each other for command. He stopped and found himself breathing hard. ‘Get some grasp,’ he said aloud. ‘Control yourself, take it easy. Simmer down and keep your head.’
He was sweating. Maybe, he thought, it was that tea she gave me. Don’t go in like this. Then the insanity returned. Perhaps she’ll leave if I come late. Perhaps she happened to be passing and she came in on a whim and she’s already regretting it. She might just leave, worrying about what I’ll do. And then the greater madman visited. She’s come to laugh at me, knowing she is safe now that I’m sick and weak.
But pride of a kind won out over even madness, fear and love. He went back to his room, washed quickly in the basin – he needed to – and changed his shirt. Slowly, because of the fear that he might again sweat too much, he made his way to the Director’s office. Another moment outside the door to gather himself. Then the firm knock. Then the entrance before the words ‘Come in’ were halfway out of the Director’s mouth. And there she was – Riba not Arbell. Break, fracture, split, fragment and smash. What did his poor heart not endure? It was all he could do to stop a cry of dreadful loss. He stood quite still, staring at her.
‘Would you mind terribly if I spoke to Thomas alone?’ she said to the Director. In other circumstances Cale would have been astonished, even if pleasantly, at the gracious tone of Riba’s request and the clear understanding by both women that it could not be confused for the kind of question to which the answer might be ‘No’. The tone of her voice was one of charming and implacable authority. The Director simpered in obedience to Riba, looked malignantly at Cale and left, closing the doors behind her. A silence followed, weighty with strange emotions, all of them horrible.
‘I can see you were expecting someone else,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s true that she was sorry to see him so disappointed and so ill, the circles around his eyes so dark – but it was also true that she was put out at being the cause of such terrible disappointment. It was not flattering, particularly when she had expected to surprise him with delight at her wonderful story of love and transformation. But in this legend of pain, misery, slaughter and madness it is as well to be reminded that everything is not for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds, a story where today is bad, tomorrow dreadful until at last the most appalling thing of all happens. There are happy endings, virtue is something rewarded, the kind and generous get what they deserve. This is how it was with Riba. She came into the story of poor, tormented, miserable Cale in the most revolting of ways: bound hand and foot and waiting to be eviscerated in order to satisfy the curiosity of Redeemer Picarbo concerning the bodily source of the monstrous impurity that possessed all women. Riba knew perfectly well, because Cale had constantly reminded her, that he was history’s most reluctant saviour and that if he’d had it to do again he would have left Picarbo to his repellent investigations. She didn’t really believe he’d have left her to die, at least she probably didn’t believe it. You never quite knew what he was capable of. After this narrowest of squeaks, her climb to prominence was remarkably easy. She was a beautiful girl, if unusually plump, but in Memphis beauty was commonplace. Helen of Troy had been born in Memphis and was generally considered to be rather plain compared to others. What brought Riba to the attention of a great many men in the city was that she was kind, good-natured and intelligent, but also that her body, sonsy to the point of fubsy, expressed in flesh the generosity and comfort of her heart. Servant to the hated Arbell (though not hated by Riba), she had been caught as much as her mistress in the fall of Memphis and the dreadful flight from the Redeemers, in which so many of the Materazzi who survived Silbury Hill died from hunger and disease. Though she was still Arbell’s servant when those that remained of the Materazzi stumbled into Spanish Leeds, it was inevitable that her easy charm and wit would bring her the attention of men of every kind and class. And, unlike the Materazziennes, she had the overwhelming advantage of liking men rather than despising them. Such choice she had! She was adored by coal-carriers, butchers, lawyers and doctors, as well as the aristocrats of Memphis and Spanish Leeds. Fortunately for her peace of mind, from among this array of possible futures (bigwig or nonentity?) she fell in love with Arthur Wittenberg, Ambassador to the Court of King Zog and only son of the President of the Hanse, the syndicate of all the wealthy countries of the Baltic Axis. His father opposed their marriage, understandably, until he met her and was so charmed he almost forgot himself and was on the verge of attempting to betray his son in the manner of a Greek tragedy before he pulled himself together and determined to behave. How would storytellers and makers of operas live if everyone was so restrained? At any rate, in a matter of a few months she rose from starving nobody to becoming a woman of vast wealth and enormous political influence.
Still, despite Cale’s shock she was sympathetic to his disappointment – if a little piqued concerning her hurt vanity – and slowly allowed him time to pull himself together by chatting away amusingly, and self-deprecatingly, about her rise to fortune. After an hour or so, Cale was himself again and able to hide his disappointment and his considerable shame over the depth of that disappointment. He was, in the end, pleased to see her, amused by her current good luck while also considering how it might be made use of. She chatted away about the past and had a fund of amusing stories to tell about the absurdity of life amongst the nobility.
‘Was Arbell at your wedding?’