It's Beginning to Hurt

by James Lasdun

  “It’s nice of you to join us,” she said. “Tristan, run and tell Daddy our guest is here.” She smiled distantly at Martin. “My husband’ll get you a drink, in just a moment.” She turned to her younger son, ruffling his hair and fussing with his collar. Martin registered her apparent indifference to himself. At one time such behavior might have offended him, but now he couldn’t have cared less. He observed her dispassionately. Her particular haughty beauty reminded him of a painting he had seen at an impressionable age, a portrait of an aristocratic lady carrying an enormous muff and striding across fields under a wild dark sky, her elaborate coiffure disheveled by the wind; her expression, at once hard and avid, provocatively suggestive of a woman on her way to an assignation. His eye was drawn to the sapphires, which rose from the pale flesh below her neck like some crystalline outcropping of her blue blood. Seeing Martin glance at them, she brought her hand up to her throat—almost defensively, it seemed, though she appeared surprised to find them there.

  “Oh. We’re going on to a dinner at the Nigerian Embassy. John’s building a dam outside Lagos.”

  “Ah.”

  “That’s why I’m all dressed up.”

  Martin smiled, wondering if this was meant to convey that she wasn’t all dressed up for him and noting that not even an outright put-down, if that was what this was, had the power to touch him anymore. His ability to detach himself from a situation in this way was a source of satisfaction to him, though he did sometimes wonder where, to what state of glacial impermeability, it was leading.

  Mr. Knowles strode into the room, pink cheeked from shaving and decked out in black tie. With him came a large, strange-looking woman of twenty-five or so, in a shapeless brown dress.

  “There you are,” he said. “Sorry to keep you. What’ll it be?”

  Martin asked for a gin and tonic.

  “By the way, this is my daughter, Charmian, the boys’ half sister.”

  Martin nodded at the woman. She murmured a greeting and sat on a hard chair at the edge of the room, staring forward with an expression that looked like fear, but was probably just the effect of her eyes being unnaturally prominent and far apart. Mrs. Knowles gave her a faint smile, from which she seemed to cringe. She was painfully unattractive.

  “Charmian’s off in Devon most of the time,” her father said, “learning to be a horticulturist or some such thing. But occasionally we’re graced with a visit. Whiskey, you said?”

  “Gin and tonic.”

  “Right you are. Tell him about the gardening, love. She works like a slave for this landscape gardening company. Everything from potting the azaleas to digging bloody great ditches with a bulldozer, and all for next to nothing, which seems to me a bit daft considering she could buy the company ten times over with what we’ve given her, but there it is, wants to work her way up the hard way. Not that I’m against that, mind you …”

  The girl’s face grew steadily pinker as her father spoke. She twisted a lock of her lank, mousy hair, her eyes bulging and blinking. There was an aura of debilitation about her, as though she had fought hard but been crushingly defeated in the side of life having to do with appearances and social graces. One of her eyes, Martin suddenly noticed, was dead, the light out in its gray iris. He looked away, sipping his drink and wondering how soon he could leave.

  Mr. Knowles came to an end, and as the girl said nothing, Martin felt it was his turn to make a contribution, if only to show he wasn’t completely lacking in the social graces himself. He turned to Mrs. Knowles.

  “Nice garden you’ve got out there, speaking of gardens.”

  “Thank you. We enjoy it.”

  “That’s one thing I miss where I live, a garden.”

  “I know what you mean. They can make such a difference.”

  “I first got the idea of becoming a guitarist in a garden like that.”

  He hadn’t known he was going to say that when he embarked on the topic, but the thought that he was now going to impose an intimate personal anecdote on Mrs. Knowles filled him with a certain malicious glee. He realized that he had, after all, been stung by her offhand manner.

  “Oh?” Mrs. Knowles adjusted her posture warily on the sofa. Her lips bunched together, little dimples of polite anticipatory amusement forming on either side of them. Assuming a tone of light self-mockery, Martin began to describe the party he had gone to as a boy. At first he felt poised and fluent, so much so that he found himself half imagining he was a fellow guest at the embassy dinner Mrs. Knowles had said she was going on to, some suave diplomat seated next to her and mesmerizing her with his stories, and in the briefly cushioning sweetness of this fantasy, he allowed himself to acknowledge that this disdainful woman—younger than himself, he realized—had stirred vague desires in him. For a minute or two he became expansive, flippantly evoking the little vision of combined hedonism and virtuosity he had received in that other garden. But as he did so, he felt an unexpected pang go through him, as though the event still held a charge of its original brilliance and had released it in a sudden vengeful throb. Jarred, he felt his tone falter. Then to his dismay, he lost his way in the anecdote, trailing off on an unintended and rather mawkish note of self-pity. Mrs. Knowles looked at him for a moment, saying nothing, but leaving him in no doubt that he had humiliated himself.

  All the while he had been aware of the half sister listening to him intently. He glanced at her now. His story appeared to have touched some chord in her; her face was a study in anguished sympathy. On second thoughts he wasn’t so sure that the eye was dead—maybe just askew in its socket or lazy. He felt uncomfortably transparent under her gaze. She seemed on the point of saying something to him. He turned brusquely away.

  “So you like the outdoors then?” he heard Mr. Knowles say. “Plants and trees and all that?”

  “Well … I suppose so.”

  “Just like Charmian! She’s always been a great one for the outdoors, haven’t you, love? We’re thinking of buying her a house with some land that’s come up for sale near our cottage. Somewhere she can run her landscaping business from when she’s ready …”

  “Oh …”

  “Yes, stonking great piece of land actually. Almost a hundred acres. In Dorset, near the sea. Do you like the sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s just five minutes away. Gorgeous. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that coast, but for my money it beats anywhere on the bloody Mediterranean …”

  So it continued for another half hour. Then Mrs. Knowles looked ostentatiously at her watch, and a moment later, to his relief, Martin was in the hallway, saying goodbye.

  Mr. Knowles gripped his hand. “By the way,” he said, “are you doing anything special tomorrow evening?”

  “I’m not sure … I’ll have to …”

  “Just that we have tickets for Covent Garden. Peter Grimes, isn’t it, dearest?”

  Mrs. Knowles nodded. “Rather good seats, I believe.”

  “Unfortunately it turns out we can’t go.” Mr. Knowles continued. “Might you be interested?”

  Martin loathed opera himself, but there was a woman he had met recently, a dancer working at the health food restaurant where he sometimes ate, who might be impressed by an invitation to Covent Garden. He hesitated.

  “We’d been looking forward to going”—Mr. Knowles pressed on—“but I have a client in from Dubai just for the one night, and he wants to have dinner at one of these celeb chef places instead, so there it is. What do you say?”

  Rebecca, the woman’s name was, slim and tall with pillowy red lips and no rings in her nose or eyebrows. They’d been sizing each other up for a couple of weeks, flirting casually. He’d been thinking it was getting time to make a more definite move.

  “Well,” he said cautiously, “if you’re sure …”

  “Now I know Charmian’s keen on going, aren’t you, love? Which is one ticket taken care of. And since neither of the boys can be persuaded, we thought you might like the othe
r one. I imagine you would, as a music lover?”

  Martin gaped at Mr. Knowles, absorbing this. The full extent and depth of the man’s wheedling, coercive personality seemed to have suddenly disclosed itself, like some strange creature opening unsuspected wings. He realized he had been maneuvered into a position where he had no choice but to agree to accompany the girl to the opera. As he heard himself do so, he was aware of Mrs. Knowles walking serenely out of the hall with an air of having seen all she cared to of something a little unseemly, of the two boys looking at their father and him with expressions of neutral appraisal, and of their half sister, Charmian, standing with her head bowed under what seemed an incapacitating weight of mortified shame, her large hands gripping the lavish scroll at the end of the banister as if for support.

  “Grand. That’s settled then,” Mr. Knowles was saying. “We’ll see you here around six tomorrow evening, shall we?”

  “All right,” Martin said, angrily telling himself that as soon as he got home, he would phone back with some excuse.

  As he was turning to go, the girl looked up at him. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” Her voice was low and surprisingly melodious.

  “Now what’s that about, girl?” her father demanded, frowning. “The man’s just said he wants to come!”

  “I mean, if for some reason you discover you can’t come after all, I won’t mind.”

  Martin held her gaze a moment. Her face was really very strange—large and oval, with a propitiatory quality, like a salver on which certain curious, unrelated objects were being offered up for inspection.

  “I’m sure there won’t be any problem,” he muttered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He sensed immediately that she knew he was lying. Once again he felt utterly exposed, as though she could see not only through this small deceit but all the way inside him, past his stoicism, past the disappointments underneath, and on into whatever mysterious flaw had brought them about in the first place. And far from accusatory, she seemed oddly forgiving, her expression suggestive of inexhaustible, pent-up sympathies. He turned abruptly and left.

  On the bus home he concocted a story about having to visit a sick aunt in Surrey a day earlier than he’d thought. That would do for an excuse. What the hell did they think? That he was going to pretend to fall for the girl? All this time, he realized with a flare of rage, he had been under discreet scrutiny as he’d made his way up and down through the quiet house, had been appraised and judged suitable (suitably modest in his aspirations, was it, or just suitably hard-up and opportunistic?) as a candidate for what had no doubt been a long-standing attempt on the part of the household to off-load its damaged goods. The image of her sorrowful face came into his mind. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” he heard her say again in her gentle voice. He turned his head abruptly.

  Out through the windows he watched the glazed cornucopias of the Fulham Road reel by, then the river, bronze with red ripples in the July dusk. Another fantasy, half vengeful, half erotic, played itself out in his mind: he imagined himself marrying Charmian, living with her in a big house in the country. On weekends, while she potted azaleas or worked a bulldozer somewhere, Mrs. Knowles would run across the fields to him in her finery, while he waited for her in some dark barn or stable. He pictured her in a state of reluctant subjection to her own desires, undressing for him, offering him her sharp breasts. Then the image of Charmian’s face loomed back: large, sad, beseeching, full of forgiveness … A wry look turned his lips; she, at least, knew what was what. Too bad she wasn’t prettier. In another world you might find happiness with a girl like that, but not this. Not him. Again he looked out, trying to rid himself of her image. The ocher brick semis and tatty high-rises of his part of London appeared. He liked the area, its anonymity and total lack of pretension. As soon as he got home, he would phone the Knowleses with his excuse. Then what? Go to the health food restaurant perhaps, have his usual tempeh and rice up at the mosaic counter, chatting with Rebecca. Maybe he’d suggest a drink after her shift. She’d look at him a moment, resting her eyes on his, long enough to convey that she understood what he was asking, then purse her pillowy lips and say either yes or no. If yes, they’d have a couple of drinks at the after-hours bar by the tube station, then either that night or the next go back to his place. Before they fell into bed, he’d take out his guitar and play her a couple of his party pieces: the Bach Sarabande; a minuet by Sor. The affair might last a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. Then all the usual crap would start: other lovers creeping out of the woodwork, insufferable best friends, incompatible habits and needs, problems that nothing short of falling seriously in love could solve, and having given up on the idea of becoming a husband and father in any style he could have tolerated, Martin had disciplined himself not to fall in love some time ago. This was the pattern of his life. He had no desire to change it and no intention of letting anyone else change it for him.

  All the while the half sister’s strange face continued hovering in his mind’s eye, gazing at him with its look of unasked-for sympathy. Again he heard her voice: “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” He shook his head violently. “Too bloody right I don’t,” he muttered as he got off the bus. The people getting on stared at him, but he didn’t notice. He was in the thick of a battle, and it seemed to him he needed every ounce of his strength to defend himself.

  THE OLD MAN

  The two women appeared in Conrad’s office late one afternoon in March. Olga, the mother, had rouged cheeks wrinkled like walnut shells and wore several rings on her gnarled fingers. The daughter was blond, with a flat, handsome face and a full figure that she carried with confidence. According to her résumé, she was thirty-eight years old. Her name was Lydia Krasnova.

  The two had come from the former Czechoslovakia, where they had worked in a flower-growing cooperative until the fall of communism. After making their way to the States, they had settled in Albany, opening a flower stand near the Rensselaer train station with the help of a loan from an émigré business fund. From there they’d scoured the area for a plot of land where they could start their own growing business. They’d found a two-acre lot a few miles outside the city. There was a house on the property, which they’d moved into, and a dilapidated cottage, which they rented out. Now they were looking for some capital to start building the greenhouses.

  The mother, who spoke little English, eyed Conrad silently while Lydia did the talking. The presentation was polished and thorough. They had priced heaters, ventilation systems, and sprinklers; found suppliers for soil additives and fertilizers; talked to distributors; and set up preliminary agreements with wholesalers in New York.

  Conrad listened without interrupting. At the end he told the women he needed to make some calculations of his own, but he knew already that he was going to give them the small sum they were asking for. He had had more than two decades of experience in the kind of small business venture they were describing, and he had an instinct for a sound proposition.

  On their way out the mother pointed a bony finger at the framed photograph on his desk. “Your daughter?”

  “No. That’s my wife.”

  “Young!”

  “Well … She died. Nine years ago.”

  “Oh! I … Sorry …”

  “That’s okay.”

  The old woman looked helplessly at her daughter. In an easy gesture Lydia turned back and looked at the photograph, placing her hand on the desk next to the frame.

  “You must miss her,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Margot.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  They left. In the quiet room Conrad looked out through the window. A cement barge was gliding down the river in the evening light. It moved slowly, almost too slowly for Conrad to gauge any movement at all, but he watched until it disappeared.

  Preparation of the site
began that summer. On Conrad’s first visit Lydia and her mother were in rubber boots, overseeing the clearing of the trees. The logging crew had cut down a thick stand of hardwoods and were dragging the stumps out of the dirt. Chaos of one kind or another always prevailed at the beginning of a new project, and this was no different except perhaps in its raw physicality and the fact that these two women, one so bent and ancient, the other so immaculately elegant, were its source. The place was cratered like a bomb site, with huge, mutilated trunks lying in piles, great tangles of upturned roots that seemed to writhe in the light, and a powerful, almost animal smell of sap in the air. The wood was going to be sold at the lumberyard, and the women, who seemed to know about such things, were instructing the loggers to hide flaws in the trunks by roughing the surface with the toothed edge of the backhoe’s metal bucket.

  “More! More!” the old woman screeched at the driver over the roar and clank of the huge machine. “Good! Stop!”

  A week later bulldozers leveled the dirt, and soon after that the contractor brought in the steel and glass for the houses themselves. Tunnel frames with plastic sheeting would have been cheaper to build but harder to heat in winter, and in this, as in all other aspects of the project, the women had persuaded Conrad that the higher-priced option was the only one that could possibly merit serious consideration. There was something lofty, almost aristocratic about these women, Conrad thought, and he found that he approved of this. Lydia, with her queenly bearing and calm practicality, had begun to fascinate him.

  They liked to play bridge, and on discovering that Conrad knew the rudiments of the game, they invited him to join them, summoning for a fourth the tenant they had installed in the small cottage next to their house.