The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Will there be anything else, Dr Foxe-Payne?’ he asked, then left as discreetly as he came.

  My father, who disapproved of servants on principle, liked to boast of those at Trinity: many were third generation and could not be bettered; the college kitchens and its cellars were similarly unrivalled. Certain elements in the university would sometimes claim pre-eminence for King’s College, or even St John’s, in such respects; my father had nothing but contempt for such foolishness. Once the man had left us, he took the chair behind his desk and regarded me in a quizzical way, as if trying to work out who I was. Given my Islands journeyings and Saranac Lake, it was eighteen months since I’d last seen him.

  ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ my father said, as I’d known he would. Then he remembered: snatching his mind back from his book’s next paragraph and the intricacies of Aeschylus, he said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your little friend. Frances, was that the name? My condolences.’

  Fifteen minutes in, I saw him glance at his watch. How unchanged he was, I was thinking; how unruffled. Marriage – his kind of marriage – had suited him. He had a sleek look, these days; the look of a man whose star was in the ascendant – it had been on the up for years. His book on Euripides had been well received. Nicola’s efforts on his behalf, her regular lunches and parties – her networking, as we’d say now – had borne fruit. He had fewer enemies, more allies at Cambridge these days; there were rumours he might become the College Bursar, should the current holder of that august position decide to die, instead of clinging on in poor health, as at present.

  I glanced down at my father’s desk – our conversation was taking place across his desk. He had been reading undergraduate essays; in the margins of the scrawl nearest to me were my father’s neat, cold comments, written in green ink. Define your terms, read the first of them. They were always telling you to define your terms at Cambridge: it was the university’s watchword. It could stop you in your tracks for days, centuries…

  My father glanced at his watch again and cleared his throat. This heralded dismissal, so I said, fast: ‘The thing is, Daddy – someone wants to marry me. He’s asked me to marry him. His name is Eddie. Eddie Vyne-Chance.’

  Mercifully, this name, this pompous name, rang no bells; my father, despising all modern verse, never read any poetry post-1880 – and that luncheon party was a long time ago. He made a steeple of his fingers. ‘I see. And your reply was?’

  ‘I said I’d think it over.’

  This was not true. What I’d said was, Very well. Why not? The marriage proposal had come thirty minutes after our encounter on deck, by which time we were in the bar, on my first and his third brandy. If he’d proposed vaulting the ship rails and diving into the Atlantic, I’d have given the same answer.

  ‘Very wise. I suggest you do so. Do I know his people? What are his means?’

  I knew it wouldn’t assist to explain the grand Vyne-Chance clan, or to mention poetry; I could imagine the scorn it would provoke. I said, ‘I have means, Daddy.’

  ‘Indeed you do. I hope that is not an enticement. Are you asking my permission? In my day, that task was undertaken by the swain concerned. No doubt customs have altered. Perhaps you came here seeking my advice? A pleasant change, if so.’

  I rose and began to back away. He added, ‘Have you known him long?’

  ‘I met him on the boat from America. But I knew him before that, sort of.’

  I averted my eyes, fixed them on the glories beyond the windows: Nevile’s Court, the Wren Library; sublime architectural order, unchanged in two and a half centuries. An antique land, as my suitor had once claimed; he had not been sober on that occasion of course. Byron had once had his rooms on this same staircase. On the roof of the Wren Library were statues representing Divinity, Law, Mathematics and the Arts. Four wise men. When I was a very small child – it must have been before my father left for the war – he took my mother and me on a tour of that library; he had shown us a few of its great treasures: a Shakespeare first folio, the books Isaac Newton had bequeathed his college, and a precious medieval missal; I could still remember its blue and gold angels. One had held a pen in his hands – a recording angel.

  ‘A shipboard romance. Dear God. You retain the capacity to surprise me, Lucy. I had thought you possessed some modicum of sense. My advice is – discuss the matter with Nicola when she returns. You will find that, in such affairs, she is entirely clear-sighted. Beyond that, my dear, what can I say? You are twenty-four––’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘Twenty-five, of independent means, in good health and, as far as I am aware, of sound mind. You were obstinate as a child and remain obstinate to this day. You will act as you choose, and I will only waste my valuable time if I seek to reason with you, let alone to dissuade you. Goodbye, my dear.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘Close the oak on your way out. I have work to do. I wish to avoid further disturbances.’

  I closed both doors to his set, inner and outer, as instructed. My father: hermetically sealed in, safe from importunates. He returned to Aeschylus, I returned to Newnham.

  It was dark when I reached the house. Clair Lennox had ferried her records inside, I discovered. On entering the sitting room, I found her sprawled on the sofa in her painting clothes, fur-booted feet propped on a cushion, two glasses of red wine on the table next to her. The record on the turntable was, again, La Traviata.

  ‘Do you have to play that?’ I asked, coming to a halt in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. I’m considering consumption. Chekhov, the Brontë sisters, Keats, Chopin, Modigliani, poor pale Thomas Chatterton – and your poor little friend. Deathbeds in general. It’s giving me ideas – something I can use.’

  ‘Frances was neither poor nor little. And she isn’t material for your paintings either. What a disgusting ghoul you are, Clair.’

  Crossing to the gramophone, I lifted the needle, silencing Violetta’s caterwauling. Then I snapped the record in half. Then I sat down in my mother’s chair and stared at the fire. Clair was unmoved by this act, though she gave me an assessing look, so possibly it interested her. More material.

  After a silence, she said: ‘You look like hell, you know. You’re soaking wet. Have you been swimming? Look, I’m sorry about your friend, all right? I can see, on reflection, Traviata, not tactful. You won’t believe me, but I didn’t set out to upset you. I wasn’t even thinking about you. Have a glass of wine – it might help, it might not, but it’s worth a try.’

  She passed me the glass, then returned to the sofa and slumped again. She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and turned her sharp dark eyes to inspect me. She still looked much as she’d done that first day I’d met her at Nicola’s ill-fated lunch party. Scarcely aged, a little Harlequin; deft monkey hands, black hair cut in a severe bob, an uncompromising fringe. She was wearing paint-encrusted trousers and three jumpers – she never cared how she looked; she rarely bothered to change her work clothes. No inclination to please or be liked; a measuring stare that was at best critical, at worst hostile. You don’t understand Clair, Nicola liked to say. You can’t see why I need her. I drank some of the wine.

  ‘Why didn’t they tell you your friend Frances was ill?’ she asked, after an interval. ‘Did her family think it was the famous Curse, claiming yet another victim, or were they just ashamed? People get like that with TB, I’ve seen it. One of my Slade friends had it. Galloping in his case. His parents sent him to Switzerland. He died two days after he got there. That was hushed up too. They didn’t want talk, they said. Or they knew they’d be shunned perhaps.’ She gave me a narrow look. ‘It’s infectious.’

  ‘Contagious.’

  ‘There’s a difference?’ She rose, prowled about the room and returned to the sofa. ‘So, let’s try. I’m going to try. Let’s talk. Tell me, what are you going to do now? I thought – maybe you’d take off for London. Stay with your friends there.’

  ‘Rose and Peter?’ I’d considered that possibilit
y and rejected it. I didn’t want to inflict myself on them, not in my present state. ‘No. I shall write my islands book. Work.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, here. Sorry to dismay you. Where else would I go? I do live here.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You have money. Unlike some of us.’

  This was true – much of what Clair said was true, which was one of the reasons why I found her so disconcerting. I did have money; I kept inheriting it unexpectedly. First, when I was twenty-one, a trust from my mother; then more from my Emerson grandmother, who out of the blue left me investments and paintings; finally from my father’s estranged sister, my Aunt Foxe, who had divided her legacy between me and the RSPCA. The investments had plummeted in the wake of the stock market crash; the paintings were in storage. I had an emergency fund and a small monthly income; my first book had brought in some money, though a tiny amount, and perhaps the second would bring some too. I had enough to support me and pay for travel. I’d had enough to take me to Saranac Lake on the first available train… Money buys freedom. In Clair’s view, frequently canvassed, it could buy other things as well, a London flat, for instance, a house at Land’s End – wherever: she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.

  She rose, prowled about the room again, and refilled her wineglass. ‘You?’ She held the bottle poised over my own glass and, before I could demur, refilled it. ‘Drink it down – sometimes it’s as well to get drunk, you know. Think of it as medicine,’ she added, her tone as close as it ever came to conciliatory.

  ‘I had an abortion once,’ she continued, in the same tone, lying back on the sofa again. ‘Christ knows how I got myself in that predicament. It was when I was at the Slade. The paintings weren’t working, and that was making me desperate, so I got blind drunk at a party one night. The only time I’ve ever made that mistake. Do it once, and get pregnant – just my luck. He coughed up, which was gentlemanly. So it wasn’t backstreet – not some cackling crone with a wire hook. Oh no, it was a Harley Street cove in a morning suit, a swish clinic… I drank a bottle of gin every day for a month afterwards. Then I was cured. I’ve never looked back. The painting improved at once. So: when in distress, I recommend drink – used judicially.’ She frowned. ‘On the other hand, it got me into the fix in the first place, so maybe I don’t. Tricky, eh?’

  I looked at her curiously: what a peculiar woman she was – blind and impervious to other people’s feelings, entirely without shame or conscience. I knew what abortions were. They were illegal. I had never heard anyone discuss them, let alone admit to having one.

  After a while, I asked: ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘Who, the perpetrator? No. I couldn’t stick the man. Why would I?’

  There was a silence then; Clair stared up at the ceiling and I stared into the fire, watching the flames’ flickering patterns.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ I said, after a long pause. ‘Your situation then, and mine now. They’re different, Clair. Even you can see that.’

  ‘If you say so.’ She shrugged. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on grief, you know.’ She yawned, and jumped up. ‘Christ, I’m starving. There’s no food in the house. I leave all that to Nicola. I think I’ll bike off down to the chippie. Cod and chips for me – you?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I’m skint. I need ninepence – a shilling if you’re feeling flush. Then I can get a slice and a pickled onion as well.’

  Most of my money was still in dollars. Having nothing smaller, I gave her a five-pound note. I knew she wouldn’t return the change – she never did.

  ‘Gosh, thanks,’ she said. ‘Very generous, milady.’ She gave a rustic curtsey, a housemaid’s bob.

  ‘Oh, and if the phone rings,’ she added, moving to the door, ‘it’ll probably be Vain-Chance again. He rang twice while you were out. Once to say he’d be on the train to Cambridge tomorrow and once to say, oops, change of plan, no he wouldn’t.’ She paused. ‘He was at some party again. At Baba’s, he said. Very loud music, the merry tinkle and crash of glasses. Some man kept yelling that Eddie had pinched the corkscrew… Nicola rang too. I told her Vain-Chance was pestering you. She was not pleased.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘The same thing I’d say. Run a mile. Charm the little birdies out of the trees when he wants. And beauteous, of course. But he didn’t get that nickname by accident. Think about it.’

  Nicola was delayed in France longer than expected; she returned to Cambridge a few days before Christmas. Fresh from her mother’s funeral, from prolonged battles with notaires, she arrived flushed with excitement, trembling in triumph. Yes, all her arrangements had gone perfectly, despite the entanglements of French bureaucracy. Her mother’s affairs had been settled; the nunnery’s bills had proved negligible. Her mother’s house was already sold. The acte de vente had required the mayor’s seal, the acte authentique had required four witnesses, but her orderly approach – she had always been a fiend for order – had carried her through. I forget how many thousand francs she had wrested from the grasping fingers of French tax officials, maybe it was hundreds of thousands in those days of unstable currencies, but it was – sufficient.

  ‘Sufficient for what?’ I asked, the first time this word was used. I soon learned.

  ‘It will buy us a London flat. Maybe even a house, depending on the area we choose,’ Nicola announced in a dreamy way, as we came towards the end of our Christmas lunch. ‘But I thought: Bloomsbury. And the houses there are absurdly large, so a flat would be the thing for us. In one of those beautiful squares, a view over London plane trees. Close to the theatres and the opera house. Within walking distance of the British Museum and the Reading Room. Right in the heart of things… ’

  I looked around the table, decorated with holly and candles. Outside it was dark. In a distant way, I was wondering who came into the ‘us’ category and whether it included me; wondering whether this possibility had been discussed before and when. Had it been mooted years ago, while I was studying at Girton? Discussed when I was absent on my travels? I began to see that it must have been: it was news to me, but evidently not to my father or Clair Lennox. Both were delighted.

  ‘Thank Christ. Escape from this miserable backwater at last,’ Clair said. ‘A toast to Madame Maladie.’ She raised her glass.

  ‘Now, now. Let us remain decorous,’ my father said, in mock reproof. ‘But the advantages are obvious, so we owe Yvette Dunsire, poor woman, our thanks… I must say, it will be a great relief to sell this house, and we’ll have no difficulty – family houses are always in demand in Cambridge. It is far too large for us, and always has been. The outgoings grow more punitive each year. I should make a considerable monthly saving… and of course Bloomsbury would be convenient for me, Nicola, my dear, should you decide on that. Not far to the station… I could be back in college in little more than an hour. To be so close to the Reading Room would be a very great pleasure. I shall of course need a study there, my dear. And I must have accommodation for my books.’

  ‘And I’ll need a studio,’ Clare interrupted. ‘Don’t forget that, Nicola. Doesn’t have to be big. But I must have large windows. North light.’

  Along the length of the table, in the flicker of the fire- and candlelight, Nicola’s eyes met mine and held them. We had had our quarrels over the years, but none of the sometimes bitter words that had passed between us had broken the strong thread that bound us: she could still read my mind, as she always had. Rising from her chair, as my father and Clair began to elaborate on their respective needs, she came quietly to my side and, taking me by the hand, drew me into the silence of the sitting room. Closing the door, she leaned against it. I could see she’d begun to tremble – that disability she had never conquered and could never entirely hide. She was very pale and still very dear to me.

  ‘And you?’ she said, with a half-smile. ‘Do you also have a list of requirements, Lucy? Did you think I’d forgotten you? Well, I haven’t. They don
’t know yet,’ she gave a dismissive gesture towards the dining room, ‘but I’ve already found the perfect place for us. I went straight to the agents, when I came off the train from Dover. It was only the third property I viewed, but I knew it was for us as soon as I saw it. In Bloomsbury, a large flat, and it has the perfect room for you. It’s next to my own, Lucy, with a view over the square. The instant I walked in, I knew you’d love it…

  ‘It’s on the first floor, Lucy.’ Faint colour had risen in her cheeks and the trembling in her hands was increasing. ‘Four bedrooms, three wonderful reception rooms. High ceilings, abundant light – calm light, like a Vermeer painting. And in your room, the one that will be yours, space for your books… and your mother’s paintings. You could unpack some of her things if you wish. I know you will like it. You’ll be able to work there in peace, Lucy – take off on your travels if you must, though I hope your strange need to travel may pass once we’re settled. Clair wouldn’t bother us – there’s a studio for her, in the mews at the end of the garden. You know how she works! We’d scarcely see her. You and I would be together again, Lucy. We could explore London together, the way we did Paris – do you remember that? I know you remember that.’ She faltered briefly. I think my expression made her falter. ‘It’s close to the Museum, Lucy – a stone’s throw. We could visit it together, talk about Egypt and Greece as we used to do… ’

  She left the sentence unfinished. I think that she did believe in this future she was conjuring up for me – that it was one she’d imagined, dwelled on and planned minutely. I could feel the force of her will, as always, pliant and python-strong, patient and relentless. It would have been so easy to give in to that will, to be embraced by its coils as I’d been before. Yes, I remembered Paris. I remembered coming under Nicola’s spell there, and how that spell had held me in thrall throughout the remainder of my childhood. I had escaped once. If I went to Bloomsbury, if I returned to her now, I would not escape a second time.