The Realms of Gold

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘It won’t matter at all,’ said Harold Barnard, gallantly, pushing the door open for her to go through, when they had stamped out the remaining flames. He shone his torch for her on the tangled path, but she was better at making her way than he was. Still, he didn’t complain. She liked a man that didn’t complain. And she was seized with curiosity to know what his house was like, what his wife was like, what kind of life he led, out here in the country.

  ‘My wife will be pleased to meet you,’ said Harold, with pleasing confidence, as he held her own car door open for her. ‘She’s always taken an interest in archaeology. Belongs to the local Archaeological Society, and all that kind of thing. And she took me off to Greece last year for our holidays, to look at the ruins.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Frances, sincerely, wishing fleetingly that she were married to Harold Barnard and could take him off to Greece for his holidays, and belong to the local Archaeological Society.

  ‘Just follow me,’ he said, letting himself into his own new bright grey Citroen. ‘We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

  She wondered whether he was the kind of driver who would drive ostentatiously slowly, in an elaborately careful way, or whether he would take off in an abrupt, competitive and aggressive manner. He did the latter. She was flattered, concluded that he must know the small roads well, and put her foot down on the accelerator. They were there, more or less as he had predicted, in ten minutes, pulling up rather abruptly on his well-gravelled drive, in front of his large, low, highly desirable residence. It dated, she supposed, from the twenties, that period of comfortable living, but had since been much improved. A neat well-kept lawn spread around it: discreetly planted trees screened it from the road. Light shone from several windows, through several shades and thicknesses of curtain: an outside light shone, welcoming, from the porch.

  ‘How very nice,’ said Frances, climbing out of her car, trying to dusts the bits off her skirt. ‘What a lovely place to live.’

  The front door opened, and the red setter ran out, wagging his tail. Mrs Barnard stood in the door way, the light behind her, her arms folded.

  ‘I do hope she won’t mind, my just arriving like this,’ murmured Frances, as they approached.

  ‘She’ll be delighted,’ said her husband for her happily: and so indeed she seemed to be. ‘How lovely to meet you,’ said Mary Barnard, several times, as she showed Frances the beautiful brown and gold deep-carpeted bathroom. ‘How lovely to meet you,’ she said again, when Frances emerged, looking a little tidier. ‘I thought you were just one of Harold’s clients, how nice that it should be you.’

  This is what life ought to be like, thought Frances, as she followed Mary Barnard down the stairs, past the prints of boats at Boston, and Dutch landscapes at Lincoln. Nice people, pleased to see one, in a nice comfortable place. She shivered on the edge of perfectly enjoying, a perfectly ordinary experience, a perfectly ordinary encounter, an event so rare, as she walked down the wide stairs. Everything was all right, how could anything be wrong?

  Mary Barnard was a very pretty woman: no wonder Harold Barnard had such an air of being pleased with himself, and all the world. No wonder he had been sure that Frances would meet with a fair reception. What resentments could ever be nourished in so attractive a bosom? Fortunate Harold, to lie on it each night. A county girl, brown haired, well bred, just marginally too well spoken, well dressed, she stood there quite unselfconsciously in front of a trolley full of drinks and glasses, asking Frances what she would have: it was satisfying even to behold so much satisfaction. Sex, of course, was what distinguished her: she looked as though she gave and got exactly what she wanted, and Frances found the suggestive way in which she handed her husband his drink quite enchanting. She was so pleased with the Barnards, and their delightful drawing room, that she felt herself on the verge of accepting their inevitable invitation to stay for dinner, and was rather relieved when an instant excuse sprang to her lips when the invitation arrived. ‘I’d love to stay,’ she said, looking at her watch, ‘but I really must leave in half an hour, I’m expecting a telephone call at the hotel.’

  ‘What a pity,’ said Mary, unruffled, sipping her sherry. ‘But still, how nice of you to come at all.’

  Frances longed to know how long they had been married, and, if for long, whether they had had to work hard at continuing to feel pleased with one another, but it didn’t seem polite to ask. There didn’t seem to be any traces of children around, but they could have been away at school. If there were no children, that would bear out her own theory that one could manage a man or some children, but not both at once: a conclusion markedly at odds, alas, with the arrangements both of nature and society. On balance she thought that the Barnards had just been lucky. However long they’d been at it, they’d been lucky with it, and they were still enjoying it. Such things don’t happen often.

  Being unable to discuss the happiness of the Barnards’ marriage (though the subject would have interested all three), they spoke instead, briefly, of Constance’s cottage and what it might fetch on the market, discussed property prices, and moved on to archaeology. Mary was, as her husband had claimed, an enthusiast: she had a row of rather large glossy books on the subject, two of them containing contributions by Frances, which Mary pointed out, proving thereby that she did not keep the books for decoration. Frances was rather ashamed of one of the contributions: she had been paid a vast amount of money for it and it had involved very little work, as is so often the case with that kind of enterprise: the more original labour, the less pay. Mary also had Sinclair-Davies’s book about deserts, which Frances looked at with real pleasure, resolving not to be a recluse after all, but to try to get in touch with people like Sinclair-Davies again.

  ‘I have a cousin who is an archaeologist,’ said Mary, as Frances sipped her drink, looked at Sinclair-Davies’s elegant drawings, stroked the silky head of the friendly red dog, and sank yet deeper into her extraordinarily comfortable armchair, quite overcome with the possible and varied pleasant sensations of the material life. ‘I think you met him, once? He told me that he’d come across you somewhere. Hunter Wisbech, his name is.’

  ‘Good heavens, yes,’ said Frances, remembering the young man who had chatted her up so effectively that spring, the young man who had brought her tidings of Karel, and whose information had persuaded her to post the summoning postcard to Karel: and as she thought of Hunter, who had told her that Karel said he loved her, it became quite obvious to her that her postcard could not have been delivered. It was so extremely obvious that she wondered how she had ever doubted it. How very stupid she had been.

  ‘So he’s your cousin, is he?’

  ‘Well, he’s a sort of cousin,’ said Mary, and gave a very brief sketch of how Hunter fitted into the Wisbech-Hollander-Gibbon corner of county society: a sketch offered with judgement and propriety, and dropped when it became evident that Frances was not rising to a single one of the offered connections.

  ‘And is he still abroad?’

  ‘Yes, I think he has another year at the Institute.’

  ‘I thought he was a very agreeable young man,’ said Frances, politely.

  ‘Oh yes, agreeable enough,’ said Mary, with a droop of her eyes that made her look oddly like the absent Hunter: both, Frances thought, were sensual, one actively, one lazily so, but there was a marked resemblance.

  ‘Agreeable enough,’ said Mary, ‘but terribly idle. Though he got himself married again, did you know? He married an Italian archaeologist. His first wife ran off with the doctor’—and she and Harold began to laugh, as at some private joke, but Frances, still inspecting them both eagerly for the secret of happy married sex, could not tell whether it was the laughter of happy criminals, or of happy innocents. Either way, they seemed more amused than censorious about Hunter’s exploits, which they discussed at greater length over a second glass of sherry: then Frances rose, and said that she must go.

  They saw her off, with detailed instructions of how
to find her way back, and repeated invitations for more visits, while in the neighbourhood: the weekend was upon them, she could see that it was likely she would have to stay till Monday, to get the funeral fixed. She had made her mind up about the cottage: if her father didn’t want it (and it was inconceivable that he should), she would persuade him to let her buy it from him.

  She drove back to the hotel, rang her father and reported on progress, rang her children and managed to avoid speaking to her ex-husband, and then put her feet up on the bed and wondered what to do. She half-regretted leaving the Barnards, but hadn’t really wanted to stay there till they bored her or she them. She had several telephone numbers in Tockley: the undertaker’s, the vicar’s, her cousin Janet Bird’s. It seemed a little late to ring an undertaker, but she might well try the other two. Or maybe she would just go and have a meal and have an early night. But it seemed a little dull, as-’a prospect. The Barnards had engendered in her a social mood, which she needed to satisfy.

  After a while, unable to make her mind up, she went down to the bar and had a drink and chatted to the barman and to a couple of business men and a barrister who claimed to be involved in the interesting case of the Tockley smell: then, fortified, she went back upstairs and rang the vicar. The vicar was eating his supper (she could hear the noises of family meal time in the background), but said she could go and see him in the morning. So she then rang Janet Bird.

  Janet Bird was also eating her supper when Frances Wingate rang. The vicar had been eating shepherd’s pie, cauliflower and frozen peas: Janet Bird was eating shepherd’s pie and frozen peas too, though she had no cauliflower. There is some limit to life’s coincidences. Janet was alone, for her husband was out at a meeting, and she was waiting for something to happen, as usual. She was waiting with an increased expectation of restlessness, for so much that was unexpected had in fact happened of late: it no longer seemed unreasonable to expect more events.

  So when the phone rang, she answered it almost hopefully. There was a woman on the other end, who said that she was called Frances Wingate, and that she was a great-niece of Constance Ollerenshaw, and had come up to fix the funeral, and that she was Janet’s own second cousin or first cousin twice removed, or something like that, and she wondered if she could meet Janet. ‘I’m staying at the King’s Head,’ she said, this confident unknown woman, ‘and I thought perhaps you might like to come round and have a drink with me. It would be interesting to hear more about Great-Aunt Con.’

  Janet panicked, slightly. What should she do? She couldn’t go out, because of the baby. She wondered if this woman wanted to persecute her, like the press, for neglecting Constance.

  ‘I can’t come out,’ she said, ‘because of the baby.’

  ‘Oh dear, what a shame.’ The other woman sounded genuinely disappointed. There was a pause.

  ‘But perhaps . . . ’ said Janet, reluctantly.

  ‘Perhaps?’ said Frances, encouragingly. Janet had not been intending to issue an invitation, but she felt pushed into saying, ‘Perhaps you could come round here. For a cup of coffee.’

  That would be very nice, the other woman agreed. Frances Wingate was her name, she repeated. They made arrangements: she would call round in an hour.

  Janet returned to her cooling pie, rather alarmed by what she had done. She had lost her appetite. It wasn’t like her, to invite anyone round like that. The other woman must have forced her. She had forced her. Janet pushed a few peas round the plate. It wasn’t reasonable, she decided, to think it might be an accusatory visit, for Frances Wingate was Aunt Con’s direct, own great-niece, therefore if there was any guilt, any neglect, it was as much hers as Janet’s.

  Frances Wingate. She must be the granddaughter of Ted Ollerenshaw, from Eel Cottage. The name was vaguely familiar: perhaps because Harold Barnard had mentioned it, but she thought there was more to it than that.

  She ate a cold mouthful, and carried her plate back into the kitchen, and turned off the television, which had been keeping her company with a programme about a drought in Africa. What had she offered? Coffee. It would have to be Nescafe, she hoped Frances Wingate wouldn’t mind. She got out a tray, and two of the best wedding present cups. If she put the coffee in a jug, perhaps she wouldn’t notice. It all tasted the same really. She wished she had a piece of cake to offer. But she never had a piece of cake. Thoughtfully, she went back to the living room, and started to tidy up, though there was nothing to tidy. It was tidy already. And it was too late to buy a new settee, a new chair, a new hearth rug, a new house, to impress this visitor.

  She was still aimlessly tidying magazines, like an actress tidying an over-neat stage set when the door bell rang, and as it rang, as she saw the outline of Frances through the glazed door, the connection she had been searching for came back to her, recalled by the woman’s very silhouette. Of course, she knew who Frances Wingate was. She had read a whole article about her, a year or two ago, in the Sunday Examiner Colour Magazine. There had been a lot of photographs of her, at home in her house in London, and in some kind of ruins, abroad, and there’d been a ridiculous interview, in which Frances had said a lot of ridiculous things about being famous, and how she organized her home life, and who she had to dinner parties, and Janet had remembered it so well because she had found it quite sickeningly offensive and irritating and silly, and here was this silly woman, standing on her own doorstep, and ringing her own door bell. Janet wished she could remember what she had been famous for, but she couldn’t. Something ridiculous, no doubt. ‘I never use frozen vegetables,’ was one of the more infuriating things that this woman had said, ‘because one of the things that I enjoy most in life is queueing at the greengrocers to see what they’ve got, and I like peeling things too, I get a lot of pleasure out of peeling things.’ Too bad about the instant coffee, thought Janet, as she opened the door.

  The woman on the step was wearing a brown jacket, a green man’s sweater, and a black skirt unfashionably (or fashionably) long, and her shoes were not at all clean. ‘Excuse me,’ were her first words, as she offered her hand to be shaken, ‘I’m afraid I look rather a mess, I’ve had quite a day, with one thing and another.’ Her hair could have done with a brush, too.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Janet, feebly. ‘There’s only me. My husband’s still out, at this meeting.’ She was slightly appeased by the fact that Frances wiped her shoes on the mat: not very effectively, as the mud was dried on, but at least it was a gesture.

  ‘How lovely and cosy it is in here,’ said Frances, following Janet into the lounge, and taking it all in—the cheap carpet, the cheap modern furniture, the pretentious orange curtains, the pretentious Swedish candles, the desolate bleak wilderness of boredom, the nest of coffee tables, the small not-quite-full bookshelf, the overfull magazine rack, the reproduction of a Dufy painting, the white Formica table, the vase of dried leaves. ‘How nice,’ said Frances, insincerely, as she allowed herself to be settled by the electric fire, in an armchair. She warmed her hands in front of the fire. ‘How nice to be able to get warm,’ she repeated. ‘I’m afraid I came up without a proper coat, I’ve only just got back from Africa, and I didn’t have time to go and collect one.’

  It wasn’t a good opening.

  ‘From Africa?’ said Janet, frostily, without interest. ‘I’ll get you a cup of coffee,’ said Janet.

  Frances’s heart sank, as she sat there for a moment on her own. It was going to be ghastly. There was no point in having come round at all; she’d have been better off ringing the undertaker, or chatting up the barman in the hotel. She knew this kind of house all too well: she knew all too many people like Janet, tightmouthed, slightly sour, over-tidy (she looked with alarm round the impeccable, polished, dull room), critical, mean, not yet quite hardened into irremediable bitterness, but well on the way towards it. Frances shivered, and reached out her hands to the red rings and the dangerous red ache of the fire in the mushroom-tiled hearth (they were still designing hearths from the thirties
, up here), and watched the big veins rise in the backs of her hands. In so many houses like this she had sipped glasses of sherry, drunk cups of coffee, eaten small cakes (sometimes rather good cakes, for people still bake, in some parts of the provinces), and listened to discussions about the education system, while waiting to catch her train home after a lecture, while waiting to give a lecture. How many bitter little domestic disputes, how many professional meannesses, how many ungenerous remarks she had witnessed in rooms like this, bred out of the tiles and the white plaster walls. How many discussions about television programmes she had never seen, how many attempts to pull the conversation away from television, how many strange savage comments on heads of departments unfairly promoted, on the ignorance or stupidity of schoolchildren and students, on public figures arbitrarily disliked, on the distance from or closeness to London: how many insults she had received, in such rooms, from those whose only aim had seemed to be to score. Janet’s husband must be a teacher: the room bore so familiar a stamp. The only endurable subject in such a place was children: the only subject which would bring flickers of grace, of humanity, of feeling.

  ‘How old is your baby?’ she asked, politely, when Janet brought in the tray with the coffee.

  ‘Oh, he’s nearly one,’ said Janet. She handed her a cup. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not meaning to, ‘that I haven’t got any cake. Or even any biscuits.’

  ‘Oh, I never eat cake,’ said Frances, untruthfully. ‘And what’s he called, your baby?’

  ‘Hugh.’

  ‘That’s funny. My brother’s called Hugh. Is it a family name, do you think?’

  ‘Not that I know of. I called him Hugh because it wasn’t a family name.’

  ‘Funny, that we should meet like this,’ said Frances, uneasily.

  They got on badly. Janet was stiff, nervous, resentful: Frances simply wished she hadn’t bothered, and wondered why she had inflicted on herself such a dull and disagreeable hour. She was wondering how soon she could safely leave. She hadn’t in fact eaten anything since lunch, except a few olives and gherkins and peanuts, and was beginning to feel rather hungry: a piece of cake would have been quite welcome. She could tell that Janet didn’t like her at all, but hadn’t any idea how to set about interesting her, nor could she quite find the will to try. They talked, a little, about Constance, and her will, and the cottage and what would happen to it: Frances sympathized, formally, over Janet’s troubles with the press and TV, thinking privately that either the girl was a fool to let herself in for the publicity, or that she had secretly enjoyed the thrill: she suspected the latter, for there is no limit to people’s morbidity, and up here, anything must have been better than the normal tedium of life. They agreed that Constance’s death was nobody’s fault, and that nobody need feel guilty. They uttered a good many platitudes, in the course of this discussion.