by Parks, Adele
‘What have you been reading?’
‘Joyce’s Ulysses.’
‘How did you find it?’
‘Unfathomable. What are you reading?’
She held up the slim volume of Rupert Brooke war poems. He sighed, almost bored with the predictability of her choice.
‘You don’t approve.’
‘I’ve never read it. I was there. I don’t need to be burdened with another man’s account. Especially a dead man. Why would you want to get embroiled in all of that? You’d be better sticking with Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.’
And then he left the room.
She could not resist reading deeper meaning into every word he’d uttered. What had he meant? Was it anything more than a book recommendation? She thought it had to be. Over and over again she played the words through her head. He’d warned her to ignore the edition of poems that was generally agreed to be the zeitgeist of their generation’s feeling on the war; instead he’d pointed her towards a masterful portrait of desire and betrayal among society people who ‘dreaded scandal more than disease’. Lydia knew the book. She thought it ended tragically. Was he warning her off? Stepping away?
Now Lydia stood in the hallway with the bouncing dogs and the cumbersome bags; various chaps dashed about saying their final goodbyes and demanding the servants find them a hat, their gloves or a walking stick. Lydia and Edgar seemed solid against the frenetic activity but their solidness was drenched in sadness. She did not want it to end. Did he? Even the torture of being within proximity but unable to talk to one another was better than the thought of not being under the same roof. Lydia wondered when she’d see him again. The thought that she might not was crushing.
Constrained by convention, she kissed the cheeks of all the chaps she’d known before the snow-in, and shook hands with the newer acquaintances, although if pushed she would have struggled to recall any of their names; she’d only had room in her world for one man and had rudely neglected all of Ava’s other guests. As she moved along the informal line towards him, the hairs on her arms pricked up. He held out his hand. She took it, shook it, could not let it go. They turned their bodies away from the others, carving out a space in the world where there could be just the two of them.
‘How will I reach you?’ he asked. The relief was overwhelming. Her knees shuddered.
‘This is my card.’ She’d had it ready, secreted up her sleeve, just in case he gave even the smallest indication that he might want her details. He discreetly took it from her and slipped it into his pocket. Then he shrugged himself into his jacket, refusing the help of the footman. Ava tutted; she thought him rude. Lydia thought he was independent. Forward.
She watched as the troop of men set off along the driveway. It was oddly reminiscent of when the women had watched their men go off to war. Lydia thought it particularly strange that, again, Lawrence was with the women and not the men; she sighed, irritated. She watched until Edgar’s shape merged with the group and his outline could no longer be distinctly identified. She watched until they went through the gate and turned the corner and there was nothing and no one to watch.
‘Come in, you’ll get a cold,’ said Sarah. But Lydia remained standing in the driveway, staring at the space that he’d left, feeling the emptiness swallow her. His absence more real than Lawrence’s presence.
It was the maid’s scream that she heard first, then the general calling, a number of voices. Male ones were in amongst the higher-pitched yelling. Lydia was drawn back to the house, where she was confronted by Ava, looking unusually shaken.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Mr Oaksley. He’s only gone and hanged himself.’
SPRING
26
THE SUN SHONE, a buttery yellow, which encouraged tulips and chatter to bud. Finally. Lydia breathed in the spring’s warmth and unfurled herself. After weeks of emotional hibernation, she stirred. He’d summoned her. She leaned out of the car window like a child joyfully riding a carousel pony, then, barely waiting for the automobile to stop, she swung open the door and leapt out, a mass of chiffon and expectancy. Giddily she waved at the chauffeur, her good mood overwhelming etiquette.
‘What time shall I pick you up, my lady?’ he called.
‘Oh, don’t bother, Stevenson. I shall catch a taxi back to Eaton Square, or maybe take an underground train.’
She ran up the museum steps, ignoring her driver’s protests that she’d find all sorts on the tube. ‘There are no first-class carriages like on a proper train,’ he warned ominously.
She didn’t stop to take in the beauty and splendour of the elaborate portico, and danced on the spot with impatience as she was forced to pause and stand by while the doorman slowly pulled open the heavy, elaborate wood-panelled door. He tipped his hat as she darted through the entrance.
She spotted him instantly. There he was. Tall and magnificent against the colossal marbled pillars. His broad back to her. Light-headed and volatile, she ran to him, her heels clip-clopping on the black and white tiled floor.
‘Hello.’
He turned to her. She saw anxiety sitting in tight knots on his face; when he saw her standing before him, his face opened up into a broad beam. She felt soothed. She wanted to kiss him. Was going to. Push her lips on to his. Feel him, again. For a moment she didn’t care about propriety or being spotted, or even about how he might receive her kisses, but he held out his hand for her to shake, stopping her. ‘Hello, Lid.’ If she was disappointed by his careful greeting, she forgave him and lit up with delight when he added, ‘I’m so very happy you came.’
It was simple, direct. It was how she felt. So very happy. She had not seen or heard from him for six weeks; it had felt like six years. She’d almost drowned in a sense of pointless desolation. At times she’d felt the slow minutes pull at her back and legs; she’d ached as though she was an old woman. At other times it felt as though time was scalding her; she was jittery and wild. She had continued, as she must, but she had functioned rather than lived. She had attended parties, laughed, drunk and danced; she’d worn silk, satin and chiffon in cobalt, magenta and emerald. The same woman, to all intents and purposes; not the same woman at all. Without knowing it, she’d become the draw of every eye in these past weeks. Everyone agreed that there was something about her. Something electric and different. The naïve couldn’t comprehend; they wondered whether she was at last pregnant, which she was not. The more knowing exchanged interested glances above her head. They recognised that she was a woman on the cusp; it was simply to be decided whether she was on the cusp of a love affair or some other disaster. ‘Perhaps bankruptcy or alcoholism,’ Harry Fine offered sardonically. ‘There’s certainly an energy to her. Or at least a sense of desperation.’
At every party she’d craned her neck, beyond eager to catch a glimpse of him, but she’d never spotted him at any of the lunches, soirées, dinners or balls. Without him there was no point in her being there, being anywhere. She found the sudden craze for themed dressing infuriating, as it further hampered her search in crowded rooms.
‘What is this fad with fancy dress?’ she’d muttered sulkily at the last ball, where guests had been required to dress as fairy-tale characters.
‘Wishful thinking,’ Ava had replied with a yawn.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’d all rather be someone else, darling. Wouldn’t we?’
‘Masks are rather super, I think,’ Freddie had remarked, with his usual puppy-dog enthusiasm.
‘Yes, useful if you have anything to hide.’ Sarah had directed this comment at Lydia, but Lydia was too self-absorbed to notice even a warning.
‘We all have something to hide,’ Beatrice had observed sadly.
‘Not me,’ replied Ava.
‘No, I suppose not. You are openly scandalous.’
But she had not found him. He did not turn up at anyone’s country house, hunt or shoot. Lydia despaired. She reran every conversation they had had in her hea
d a hundred times; she thought of the hairs on the back of his hands, the mole on the side of his neck. Every detail seared into her consciousness, everything else dull and bland. He had her address and telephone number. He knew where to find her. She did not know where to find him. She was paralysed; it had to be him who made a move. Then, at long last, he left his card. No formal note. No explanation. Just the words V&A, 2 o’clock, 2nd March. His handwriting was extremely neat and careful. It filled her with hope, as it showed he had deliberated.
There was not an instant when she thought she might resist.
And now here he was, just in front of her. She could touch him. She could not. He handed her a guidebook and asked her whether there was anything in particular she wanted to look at. She shrugged her shoulders, unable to care enough to make a choice. All she cared about was being near him.
‘The medieval and renaissance halls, perhaps?’ he suggested. ‘That period is blood long ago shed, and therefore palatable.’
She nodded, overeager. They walked just a short distance; Lydia stared at the floor, because she feared that if she looked at him, he would see everything in her face, and she also feared that he would not. The huge black and white marble tiles were suddenly replaced by intricately laid mosaics of the same colour.
They stood side by side, in silent awe of the ancient reliefs and sculptures. Lydia had benefited from several lectures by various and renowned artists; she had knowledge and views to share but she couldn’t summon up words. Eventually he said, ‘You know, we largely have a man called John Charles Robinson to thank for this collection. He became curator in eighteen fifty-three. During his ten-year tenure he hunted out the rare, the old and the beautiful.’
Lydia wanted to make a joke that it was unusual indeed for a man to have that particular selection criteria; in her experience men only pursued two of the three, but somehow she could not be flip with him, not yet. She did not have the confidence. Instead, she slipped into the role of student and he the role of teacher; she hung on his every word like a squirrel grasping a swaying branch. ‘Revolutions throughout Europe meant that many aristocratic families were impoverished and many religious institutions had been dissolved; artworks were flooding on to the market. Robinson amassed the world’s greatest collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture outside Italy.’
‘An opportunist,’ she commented lightly.
‘A man with a good eye and an ability to see the intrinsic value.’ Edgar’s voice cracked a little. Lydia felt embarrassed. Her cheeks burned. Why couldn’t she hit the right note? Why was she being so awkward when she was generally so gracious? She wanted to be her best self with him; she feared she was coming off quite dull and silly. Edgar continued, ‘He believed that good taste could, and should, be taught. He believed that the better arbiters of taste acquired it through a process of osmosis, since childhood, but that the masses needed a museum to provide a training.’
‘He sounds a frightful snob.’
‘I think he was a friend to the poorly educated. I’ve spent a lot of time here.’ His difference spilt between them. They continued to browse, not saying much to one another; there was too much to say. Where to begin? The air between them was charged. She felt that if she stuck out her tongue, she would taste it. She would taste the want.
They stopped and took stock of Giambologna’s statue of Samson slaying a Philistine. They were both irresistibly drawn to its ferocious manliness. Lydia could clearly see the Philistine’s buttocks, and if she straightened her back, she got a peek at Samson’s pubic hair too. She was glad the statue was mounted on a tall pedestal, high up, far out of reach of her touch, because if there had been a chance, she might have stretched and stroked it. Somehow she would not have been able to stop herself. All her self-control was being channelled into not touching Edgar; she felt weakened, exhausted. She blushed at the thought of her own immodesty and she blushed more when she realised he was watching her. Carefully. Reading her.
‘Do you like this one?’
‘It’s very aggressive.’
‘Yes.’ His affirmation was also an explanation of its appeal.
She could not help herself; she reached forward and caressed the only part of the statue she could reach, the sole of the foot of the Philistine, which was exposed as he knelt begging for his life.
‘And?’
‘It’s very passionate,’ she admitted.
In the six weeks since they’d last seen one another, she’d lost weight, although there was none to lose, and she was verging on gaunt; he looked as healthy and robust as he had when she first laid eyes on him. Clearly, whatever had happened at the Pondson-Callows’ had not put him off his food. She resented and admired his equanimity but most of all she feared it. Was it possible that it had all been one-way? That their union had been an incident to him? Nothing more? When she was a child, she’d had the misfortune to slip whilst walking near a river one frosty January morning; she’d fallen and was plunged into the icy whirling water. She remembered being shocked rather than afraid. She’d come up gasping, feeling astonished with life, jolted out of any sense of contentment or self-satisfaction. People had fussed and worried, there was talk of pneumonia, but even as she’d stepped out of her wet clothes and been placed in front of a huge fire in the nursery – her small feet dangling from beneath the enormous rough towel – Lydia had recognised the incident as affirming. She’d never felt that same exhilaration again.
Until he’d entered her.
It couldn’t be a single incident. She wouldn’t accept that. Her adultery was a catastrophe that had torn a hole in the fabric of her life. It was against everything she believed in. But all she knew was that if it didn’t continue, that hole would get even bigger. There was no turning back, no patching up.
She continued to wander around the vast hall, her eyes slipping from one stunning effigy to the next, statues of gods and warriors. She stared at the broad shoulders, the taut pectorals, the muscular upper stomachs and the slight hint of a curve in the lower abdomens that slipped, melted, into slinky Vs like arrows, pointing, forcing her attention to their manliness. Were men ever that perfect? Any of them? She thought perhaps Edgar was. She had not seen much of him, that night in the study. It was dark and fast. She’d closed her eyes. She’d felt him and she knew enough from his height, breadth and forearms to hope for magnificence; her heart quickened at the thought of such erotic beauty so close to her but covered up, out of sight, out of reach. She felt spasms, low in her stomach, high above her thighs, in the area she didn’t know how to name but believed in entirely. Her husband certainly did not have taut muscles or broad shoulders. He had a perfectly respectable build, an inch above average height maybe, but there was no strength in his calves or thighs, in his back or forearms. His stomach sagged slightly, like a lazy breeze. His strength came from inheriting an ancient title and hundreds of acres of land, and his confidence was the result of an ability to discern which claret would best complement which Continental cheese. A decision he made with the butler, who talked to the housekeeper, who conferred with Cook.
It didn’t seem enough.
The statues became difficult to look at. There were so many bosoms and penises. Lydia could feel the sculptors’ hands on the clay and marble almost as she had felt Edgar’s hands on her body. A myriad of thoughts flung through her head. She thought of her bruised buttock, the way she’d acquired the blemish; she considered the leaflet the doctor had given her suggesting alternative sexual positions, and she began to feel breathless.
‘I like it here. It keeps us civilised. It reminds me that we are small but that it will go on,’ commented Edgar.
‘What will?’
‘Time.’
She had hoped he would say that they would go on. Lydia Chatfield, née Hemingford, and Edgar Trent as lovers. It was agony that he didn’t refer to them as an item or a possibility. He didn’t mention the study or the weekend at all. She didn’t know where she stood or what he wanted. They were intimate st
rangers.
She sighed and looked around her. She had no idea how to start the conversation that she had to have. They wandered around the William Morris room and saw various treasures that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Lydia couldn’t give them her attention. She was absorbed but her taut nervous energy was focused entirely on Edgar. His chiselled bone structure covered by paper-thin skin and his eyes the colour of dappled summer light falling through trees had a sinuous charm and compelling beauty that surpassed all the exhibit pieces.
There were a significant number of young women sketching, serious and focused, capturing what other artists had already created, and whilst Lydia understood the practice on an intellectual level – studying the great artist was an approved technique for learning oneself – she found something insidious in the occupation of these earnest young girls. They copied what the male artists had made. The work of the male artists would endure; the women’s work seemed counterfeit or diluted by comparison.
‘Oh, my God, that’s Beatrice,’ Lydia whispered, shocked. Beatrice was bent over her sketchpad, solemn and involved like the other women set on imitating. Lydia’s first thought was to turn in the opposite direction to avoid an awkward introduction and the dredging up of a reasonable explanation as to why, exactly, she was in the V&A museum this bright spring afternoon with a strange gentleman.
A man, at least.
Lydia noted the curve of Beatrice’s bent neck; it was familiar and startling. Vulnerable. Her short hair didn’t suit her. She used to wear it braided at the back in a French plait; it had been unfashionable, but flattering. There was something about seeing her hunched into such a tight ball of concentration that reminded Lydia of the girl Beatrice had once been; the fun, hopeful girl who’d blended optimism with a penchant for serious study. It had been a long time since Lydia had thought of her that way. If people thought of her at all – just her, not her as an adjunct, sister to Sarah and Samuel, aunt to a bunch of boisterous children – they tended to think only that it was a pity. The issue as to how Lydia would explain her own presence was momentarily blurred as she considered why Beatrice was in the museum, here in London. The opportunity to dodge was taken from her as Edgar rushed forward, practically shouting, ‘Isn’t she a friend of yours? Over there, near the Shakespeare bust. She was at the house. Beatrice, you say? Beatrice!’
