‘Oh, it does, actually,’ he said.
‘You’ve seen it, I suppose, have you,’ Daphne said, in an irritable tone.
Paul pursed his lips regretfully, ‘Well, I’m not sure you’d recognize the old place.’
‘Oh, really?’ she said, lightly but grimly.
‘Well, no – you would,’ said Paul, ‘of course you would’ – and he thought, ‘but you never will go there, you’ll never see the place again.’ He had a feeling she was blaming him already for the changes, the years of flats, the sold-off garden, blaming him for knowing what he knew and what she had hoped never to know.
‘Actually don’t tell me,’ she said.
‘Anyway, we’ve got the poem, haven’t we,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Well, of course,’ said Daphne, ‘there’s always the poem.’
There were no photos of Cecil in the album, which since he’d only spent six nights of his life at ‘Two Acres’ was hardly surprising, but of course disappointing. Paul looked closely at George whenever he appeared, from sailor-suited six-year-old to boatered Cambridge man, and with less and less doubt that whatever warmth this cold fish had felt had been directed at other young men. He asked Daphne if she would let him reproduce two photos of the house and garden, and she said she didn’t see why not, but she fidgeted until she was sure that Wilfrid had returned the album to its hiding-place. When they were all sitting down again, Paul cleared his throat and looked at her more narrowly than before, and with a greater cumulative sense that it didn’t matter how he looked at her, she wasn’t going to see him. He said airily, ‘There’s one thing-’ just as Daphne, with a little chuckle, almost grinning, as if at some great mutual satisfaction, said, ‘Well! I’m sorry to say that I’ve promised to be at my friend Caroline’s by four o’clock, so alas we’ll have to bring the meeting to a conclusion, with a vote of thanks to Wilfrid Valance for the refreshments!’
Paul’s face reddened and stiffened, but he wasn’t going to be outdone. He made a thing of nodding regretfully at his watch. ‘Well, if I’m to catch the 5.10,’ he said.
‘Oh, well, there you are, perfect,’ said Daphne smoothly.
It wasn’t clear if Wilfrid would want to drive him again; Paul was ready to phone for a Cathedral. He stood up, and started putting the tape-recorder and his papers into his briefcase with as little discomfiture as possible, in fact with a few delaying and normalizing remarks. ‘I’m so grateful to you,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t suppose I’ve been much help to you,’ she said.
‘You’ve been very kind!’ said Paul, in a full embrace of untruth. He took out his copy of The Short Gallery: ‘I wonder – would you sign this for me?’ – it was the copy he had had for review. He hoped she was no longer up to reading the pencilled marginalia, even if she thought to look.
‘What’s that…?’
‘Oh, Paul wants you to sign your book for him, Mummy,’ said Wilfrid, clearly pleased by the request.
‘Oh, well, if you like’ – and after a scrabble for a biro and with an awkward squint at the title page, Daphne wrote something, in her large loping hand – Paul didn’t look but it took him back in a complex moment to the night she had written down her address for him at Paddington, and then much further to the morning at Foxleigh long before when he’d seen her make out a cheque with a comic precautionary air of not knowing what she was doing. There was something about her writing, with its big squareish loops and above-normal scale, that seemed to show her to him as a girl, something unguarded and almost unaltered by time, the same swelling Ds and crook-like ps she would have signed in letters to Cecil Valance before the First World War, and that now she was signing for him. She closed the book and handed it back; then stood up too, with the uncertain look of having come through something without too much harm. He clipped his briefcase shut.
‘Well! I’ll be in touch,’ he said. He wasn’t at all sure he would ever see her again. ‘And as I say, I’ll let you know about the book-launch, whenever it happens. You have to be there!’ She was completely impassive at this, and Paul moved forward with a quick amiable gasp and touched her upper arm – she hadn’t seen it coming: it was only after he’d planted the first kiss and was already committed to the second that her resistance showed, a little bewildered grunt and recoil, as if from the sheer scale of his misunderstanding.
FIVE
No one remembers you at all.
Mick Imlah, ‘In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson’
1
The woman sitting next to him said, ‘I don’t know if Julian’s coming, do you?’
‘I don’t, I’m afraid…’ said Rob.
‘I believe they were great friends. I’m not sure I’d recognize him now.’ She craned round. Her black hat had an inch of veil at the front, and a mauve silk flower over her right ear. No wedding-ring, but several other fine old rings, heirlooms perhaps, on other fingers. Her clothes were soft crumpled velvet and silk, black and deep red, stylish but not exactly fashionable. She smiled at him again, and he wasn’t sure if she thought she knew him, or thought quite naturally that she didn’t need to know him to speak to him. Her firm, clipped voice had a hint of mischief. ‘I fear a number of these people are going to have to stand.’ She looked round with satisfaction at the embarrassed struggles of the latest arrivals, as they clambered along the rows, or sat down abruptly and as if they didn’t mind on some impossible ledge or radiator; one old man had perched like a tennis umpire at the top of the library steps. It was still only ten to two, but events like this brought out a strange zeal in people. Rob had been lucky to find this seat, at the end of a row, but near the front. ‘Did you go to the funeral?’
‘I didn’t, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘Nor did I. Not a fan.’
‘Oh…’
‘Of funerals, I mean. I’ve reached the age where one finds, with sore dismay, that one goes to more funerals than parties.’
‘I suppose you could say this was somewhere between the two…’ He opened the folded order of events, on which nine readers and speakers were listed. Inevitably, out of emotion, inexperience or sheer self-importance, almost all of them would go on too long, and the glinting wineglasses and shrouded buffet just visible at the far end of the library would not be reached till about four o’clock. The library itself was funereally splendid – Rob gazed at the tiers of leather-bound books with the sceptical, secretive eye of a professional. A broad arc of chairs filled the space and a low podium had been set up, with a lectern and a microphone. The servants, in their black jackets, were growing flustered, more chairs were brought in. An event like this must be a challenge to the routine of a club, the automatic deference due to a deceased member stretched a little thinner over this very mixed crowd. A couple of youngsters had been made to put on ties, but one group of men in leather were too far outside the dress-code for any such remedial action and had been let in unchallenged. The only other man without a tie was a lilac-vested bishop.
From his seat Rob had a view along the front row in profile, unmistakably members of the family, as well as people who were due to speak: he recognized Sarah Barfoot, Nigel Dupont and Desmond, Peter’s husband. Rob had had a fling with Desmond himself, ten or twelve years ago, and looked at him now with that eerie awareness of the unforeseen that lurks beneath the reassurances of any reunion. The other readers could be identified perhaps from the list. Dr James Brooke he didn’t know at all. At the far end was a man of about sixty, with a long nose and glasses on a string, looking over the typed sheets he was going to read from. He seemed somehow outside the nervous but supportive mood of the rest of the team, his own nerves perhaps concealed behind his frown and the sudden impatient glare he turned on the audience behind him; then he saw someone he knew, and gave a curt but humorous nod. Rob thought this must be Paul Bryant, the biographer.