The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  These letters are her initial source of information. Here she tracks dates, titles, prices paid. One by one she is excavating the forty-four big box files, converting the unstable stacks of papers into methodical lists. She has reached File 17.

  Pat Kelly comes with tea and biscuits. Pat likes Laura’s company, the house can be lonely. She brings chocolate bourbons.

  ‘Pat, you shouldn’t. I like them too much.’

  ‘And why not? What harm is there in a little of what you like?’

  Pat is Irish, beautiful in a comfortable cushiony way, unassailably good-tempered. Her sympathy is easily roused, most frequently by the stories she reads in the newspaper, where she locates on an almost daily basis tales of the abuse or murder of children. ‘The little angel, she’ll be in heaven now, her sufferings are over. But what was he thinking when he did it? Does he not have a mother that loves him?’

  She also brings Laura reports on her employer, whose solitary life touches her heart.

  ‘The poor man, what does he do all day but watch television? He needs company. Yesterday I heard noises in the chapel. It was him, talking to his mother.’

  Billy Holland’s mother has been dead for years. A shrine in the chapel created to her memory by her husband George has an inscription that reads: ‘You loved so well the Lord took you for his own.’

  ‘Do you mean he was saying prayers?’

  ‘Prayers? Don’t I know prayers? He was talking to her, the soft onion.’

  Pat proffers the idiosyncratic term with tenderness.

  ‘Well, Mummy, he says. You know I’ve never been the clever one, he says. I don’t know that I can hold it together much longer, he says, with Celia gone.’

  ‘You listened, Pat!’

  ‘So I did. With Celia gone, he says.’ Pat’s round eyes widen with scorn. ‘It’s ten years at least since that lady was kind enough to cease tormenting the poor man.’

  Laura knows there’s concern over money, but not that it has reached crisis point. Celia, the departed Lady Edenfield, was reputed to be a tight manager.

  ‘Do you think he’ll sell up, Pat?’

  ‘Not him. Didn’t he make a promise to his father? I never knew a man respect his father the way that man does. He says to me one day, Forty years, Pat. My father lived for forty years after my mother died, and never looked at another woman. That’s love, Pat, he says.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It’s true enough, there’s no denying. As true as it’s daft.’

  ‘You don’t say that to Billy.’

  ‘Would I say such a thing? But it’s a terrible thing to see a good man go to waste.’

  By now the tea is drunk and the three chocolate Bourbons eaten, two by Laura. Pat takes up the tray.

  ‘You’re the only one comes in here now,’ she says.

  Laura returns to her file. There, half an hour or so after Pat Kelly has told her George Holland never looked at another woman for forty years, she finds the love letters. They are tied together with string, and there’s a covering note dated October 10th 1955.

  Doll has returned my letters. I will never see her again. I will not burn what remains of the greatest happiness I have ever known.

  She unties the string. The first folded sheet carries a single line written in erratic pencil.

  Waiting in lake house 6oc. Doll.

  Then another folded sheet, an impulsive line in fluent ink.

  Swear to be there if only for a quarter hour. I miss you every minute. G.

  Laura reads no more. These letters have no commercial value. She refolds the papers, re-ties the string.

  She walks through empty halls to the chapel. The heavy door swings open without a sound. Inside is a space as big as a city church, illuminated by the melancholy colours of Victorian stained glass. The memorial to the second Lady Edenfield is halfway down the north wall, a marble effusion of urn and drapery presided over by a life-size angel. Laura tracks the carved inscription below for a date of death.

  October 2nd 1955.

  Eight days later her husband brought his liaison to an end. His forty years of devoted celibacy, it seems, formed the long coda not only to his marriage but to his adultery. Other people’s lives always so much more complicated than they seem.

  My own life so much more complicated than it seems.

  She sits in a mahogany pew and stares unseeingly at the altar furnishings. Only words on paper: but words, paper, these are the constituents of high explosive. Libraries not dry as supposed, not dusty, but coursing with blood, hissing with passion. She has learned in the course of her work to love libraries, to find in long-untouched books the shivery excitement of waking the dead. Now she learns they can destroy the living.

  Shall we meet and compare notes on the vagaries of life’s journey?

  Billy Holland is in the little room he calls his office, though it also contains a single high bed that has an air of being slept in. He is seated at his desk, reading glasses low on his nose, hands clasping greying temples. As Laura enters his big blank eyes rise up to meet hers, and he blinks as if emerging from sleep.

  ‘Oh, Laura. Hello.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Billy. I found something I thought you should see.’

  ‘How much is it worth?’

  ‘Nothing of any value, I’m afraid. Even so.’

  She holds out the string-tied bundle.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Laura. Rumple— Rumple—’

  He waves one hand in the air to grasp the elusive word.

  ‘Rumpelstiltskin?’

  ‘That’s the fellow. Weave straw into gold.’

  He reads the covering note. Bewilderment spreads slowly over his mottled face.

  ‘What is this? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I found them in one of the letter files. I’ve not looked at them, beyond a first glance.’

  He nods, and begins to untie the string. His fingers fumble helplessly. She leans over the desk, and with quick precise movements releases the knots. Easy to do for other people.

  She leaves him reading the letters in silence.

  7

  There was a note waiting for her in her pigeon-hole in the porter’s lodge. The handwriting was unfamiliar and there was no name at the end.

  4pm. Came to see you but you’re not here. If you come to see me I’ll be there.

  She knew at once the note was from Nick Crocker, without entirely knowing how she knew. She showed it to Katie, who was indignant.

  ‘Why can’t he put his name? It’s ridiculous.’

  Laura wanted to say that it wasn’t ridiculous at all, that it was both a test and a declaration. He was saying to her: if you know who I am then I’m right about you. If I’m right about you, we’ll meet again. And it was more than that, it was a promise. I’ll be there.

  ‘He doesn’t know when you’ll call on him. He doesn’t know he’ll be there. What’s he going to do? Stay in his room for days in case you drop by?’

  ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t think so.’

  He’s waiting for me now. He wants me to come. She had that melting feeling she got in her stomach when she was very excited or very afraid.

  ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘I expect I’ll look him up. Some time.’

  From this moment on she thought about Nick Crocker without ceasing. This certainly was ridiculous. She didn’t know him at all. They had talked at Richard’s party, but not for long, and she had hardly been able to hear him over the chatter and the music. How was it that on such a slender basis she imagined her life was about to change?

  Her first thought was that she would call on him in a day or two. It wouldn’t do to seem too keen. On the other hand she had no wish to appear indifferent. Maybe tomorrow evening? Soon, however, she realized she was incapable of waiting until tomorrow. Either this is all about nothing, she reasoned to herself, in which case the sooner I get it out of my system the better. Or it’s the real thing at last; in which case, why wait?
>
  She chose mid-evening for her call. Earlier and he might be out at supper; later was too suggestive. His room was at the top of a poorly-lit staircase. The outer door was open.

  How to knock? Laura wished to present herself as casual, informal, friendly, confident. Her knock must not be too insistent, nor yet too timid. Her hand hovered, raised before the door panel, and she felt her whole body shaking.

  This is stupid.

  She took a slow deep breath, and knocked twice.

  ‘Yes?’

  The room was in darkness but for a pool of light thrown onto a long desk by an Anglepoise lamp. Nick was sitting at the desk under the window by the far wall, not rising from his studies, turning to look over his shoulder at the door. His face rim-lit by the lamplight.

  ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  For a fraction of a second she saw that he was surprised: he had not expected her to come. At once she was overwhelmed by the conviction that she should not have come. But now he was up out of his work chair, turning on more lights, acting the gracious host.

  ‘That’s wonderful. You found me. Come on in.’

  ‘You look as if you’re hard at work.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Glad of the break. What can I get you? Glass of wine?’

  ‘If you have some.’

  ‘I don’t have much of anything, but I always have wine.’

  He went into the little pantry and she heard the noise of water running into a basin. Cleaning the wine glasses, presumably. She looked round the long room. It wasn’t at all like other student rooms. No posters, no discarded beer cans. The pictures on the walls were framed and looked real; engravings, mostly. She recognized one of them from the postcard he had used as a bookmark on the train. It was a monochrome version of the same scene.

  At the far end of the room a half-open door led into a small bedroom. A glimpse of crumpled duvet. Nick was in his third year, and enjoyed the luxury of a set of rooms.

  She felt her stomach shivering.

  Nick rejoined her, holding out a heavy French café glass well-filled with red wine. He smiled as he gave her the glass. She found she couldn’t hold his look and turned away, moved over to the deep old sofa, fooled about finding somewhere to stand her glass. She didn’t want to do the talking, didn’t know what to say, felt the need of clues as to what he expected of her.

  ‘What day is it today?’ he said.

  ‘Thursday, I think.’

  ‘Then here’s to Thursday.’ He raised his glass. ‘Happy Thursday.’

  She smiled and raised her glass. They both drank.

  ‘I wonder why we haven’t met before,’ he said. Then, ‘No, I don’t. I’m such a hermit.’

  ‘Are you a hermit?’

  ‘What with finals looming, and my dissertation to finish.’

  A nod towards the papers and books laid out on the desk.

  ‘What’s it on?’ said Laura.

  ‘Oh, no. Don’t ask.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He settled down on the only other upholstered chair and stretched out his legs and smiled at her over the top of his wine glass. For a moment he didn’t answer. Then in slow deliberate tones he explained himself.

  ‘The fact is, I really do care about the work I’m doing. Quite a lot, actually. But I don’t see why anyone else should care. So rather than bore people or embarrass them I’ve learned not to talk about it.’

  Laura felt a small but distinct shock. It was strange to her that these precious first moments could have any other content than their perceptions of each other. Close on the shock came shame. She had assumed that any conversation that took place between them was a cover for another sort of dialogue. Do you like me? Do I like you? Might you love me? Might I love you? And here he was wanting to talk about his dissertation.

  ‘I’d like to know. Really.’

  Anything to avoid having to talk herself. When she was nervous she chattered like a fool. And right now she was extremely nervous. He was so calm and still, his few movements so deliberate, and all she wanted to do was wriggle and scratch. It was like being a child in church.

  ‘I’m writing about landscape art. I’m writing about Arcadia.’

  He paused to see how she took this. She nodded as if she understood, which she didn’t.

  ‘About Arcadia in art, and Arcadia as a concept. People think of Arcadia as part of the classical furniture, as if it’s a myth that we’ve long outgrown. I don’t think so. I think it’s as powerful as it’s ever been. Partly because it’s pre-Christian. It’s the anti-Garden of Eden. There’s no serpent in Arcadia, there’s no forbidden fruit, no original sin. It’s the pastoral idyll, the world before towns and cities and, oh, you know, the dark satanic mills and so forth. For centuries artists painted imaginary scenes of Arcadia, using bits and pieces of real countryside, a shady grove of trees, a murmuring spring, a group of contented peasants watching over sheep. Then they started painting real countryside, but it was still really Arcadia. All those Constables everyone loves so much, they’re real places, but they’re not the only reality of rural England in the early nineteenth century. There was poverty, and disease, and premature death. He could have horrified us. But who wants to be horrified? So he painted England as Arcadia.’

  He stopped, afraid that he had talked too much.

  ‘More wine.’

  Her glass was empty. She had no recollection of having drunk it. He refilled both their glasses.

  ‘You did ask.’

  Apologizing for the lecture.

  ‘No. I’m really interested.’

  She was, too. Not in Arcadia, but in his passionate engagement with his subject. All the time listening to him she had been tracking her response, amazed that he could talk to her like this, now, when all that was vivid and immediate to her was his response to her and hers to him. Did he not feel this too? And if not, was it arrogance? Indifference? Surely she hadn’t misread the signals so totally. The unsigned note left in her pigeon-hole most of all. But perhaps he had lost interest in her as soon as he had been sure of her response. There were men like that. Or close up she had proved to be a disappointment.

  Laura’s fear was that she was pretty but not sexy.

  She drank her wine too fast.

  ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘I’m lost in Arcadia these days, which makes me very poor company. When you spend all day contemplating the earthly paradise you do get a bit spacey.’

  He took a cigarette out of a shiny blue packet.

  ‘Smoke?’

  She accepted, glad to have something to do with her hands. He struck a match for her. They leant towards each other for him to light her cigarette, the shared action so intimate, so sensual. His flame, her breath.

  The harsh smoke hurt her throat. She was unused to French cigarettes. She inhaled and felt light-headed.

  ‘I should stay in your earthly paradise if I were you,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you ever come out. It sounds perfect.’

  ‘Almost perfect. But not quite.’

  ‘What’s the snag?’

  ‘It’s a very famous snag.’

  He got up and took one of the framed pictures off the wall. It was the engraving of the group of classical figures round a tomb.

  ‘Et in Arcadia ego.’ He handed her the picture. ‘It’s an engraving of a well-known Poussin painting. You see, the words are carved on the tomb. Et in Arcadia ego. “Even in Arcadia am I.” The “I”, the “ego”, is death. Death is the snag.’

  Laura gazed at the picture. The tomb was immense, it dominated the scene.

  ‘This is the picture you have as your bookmark.’

  He was silent, surprised. Laura realized he was unaware that she had studied him on the train, which could only mean he did not study her. She had blundered. Now he knew she was more interested in him than he was in her.

  She lowered her head as if to study the picture in more detail, but really to hide her sudden blush.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘The train. You’re ve
ry observant.’

  ‘That’s me. Snoopy.’

  She looked up and met his eyes through the curls of cigarette smoke. She spoke about the picture to remove attention from herself.

  ‘There seems to be a lot more death than paradise.’

  ‘Yes. All we get is some token trees. It’s one of those paintings that presumes knowledge of the whole tradition that comes before it.’

  ‘Is that why it’s special for you?’

  ‘Is it special for me?’

  ‘Well, you have it as your bookmark.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ He frowned. It seemed not to have struck him before. ‘I wonder why. I suppose I must have a morbid streak in me. That doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? Unless you take the view that meditation on death makes one all the more inclined to live life to the full. Carpe diem and so forth.’

  Laura was drunk on red wine and dizzy on French cigarettes. Everything Nick said impressed her. He was so utterly unlike any boy she’d known before. Not a boy, a grown-up. She herself still a girl. She felt her inferiority, but she didn’t mind it. She wanted to sit at his feet. She wanted to learn from him.

  ‘Seize the day,’ she murmured.

  ‘And the night.’

  That was when she knew he desired her. At once a new confidence flowed through her and she was able to meet his smiling gaze. He was older, wiser, more sophisticated in every way, but now she had something he wanted, something she could give him in return. Her gift had very little merit in her eyes, but if he wanted it, there was a deal to be done. He would give her his maturity and his prestige. She would give him herself.

  ‘I’ve drunk too much. I should go.’

  There followed a long silence, in which their eyes remained locked. The silence told as much as the single word that ended it, but it was the word she remembered ever after.