The Realms of Gold

by Margaret Drabble

  Back they went to Karel, who was getting very bored with The Charterhouse of Parma. ‘I’m not up to this serious stuff,’ he pleaded. ‘Do get me something with a bit less action in it. Please.’

  They promised to find him something, and went off to call on Harold Barnard, to report on progress. On the way back, they bought Karel a copy of the latest Kingsley Amis from W. H. Smith’s. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said.

  David and Frances had lunch downstairs in the hotel, but Karel had to have his in bed. He lay there, drinking cream of vegetable soup, and thinking of all the things he would do to Frances when he was well enough to do them. He had to stay in bed the next day too, but on Monday, he was well enough to get up for the funeral: on Tuesday, he would return to work.

  The funeral was a very odd affair. It was attended by Frances and Karel, David and Janet, Sir Frank Ollerenshaw, and Frances’s brother Hugh: also by Mr Fox, Harold Barnard, and a photographer or two, from the local press. (The national press, as Frances had hoped, had completely forgotten the life and death of Constance, and were busily engaged upon exposing corruption in the police force, an enterprise much more worthy of their talents.) The ceremony took place at three o’clock in the afternoon: before it, the relatives (including Karel, as an honorary relative) lunched together at the King’s Head. Frances had been afraid the occasion might prove rather trying, but to her surprise and relief her father assumed his charming public role, and set out to be charming to David and Janet, whose very existence he had hitherto ignored: he was also quite excessively charming to Karel. Indeed, his deference to Karel could only be regarded with suspicion, both she and Karel independently decided, but neither chose to reject it, and both pursued, politely, and with the most profound inner satisfaction, their feet hooked together beneath the table, a conversation about the future expansion of the functions of the Polytechnics, and whether they should draw closer or not to the University system. Hugh, more inclined than his father to show a primitive jealousy of Karel, tried at first to resist the spectacle of what seemed to be a fait accompli, but after a while he thawed out, made a few louche innuendoes, and turned the conversation to the good old days at the Eel.

  Frances had never expected to hear her father speak of his childhood, nor was she satisfied now. But he did say, after a while, as they reached the crystallized Stilton, ‘I wouldn’t mind a drive, to look at the old places, after we’ve buried Aunt Con.’

  They buried Aunt Con, as Mr Fox had suggested, in the new extension of St Martin’s churchyard. The church was built of a golden stone, peculiar to a small locality of the county: it crumbled and deepened in the dark afternoon air, yellow gold, soft, old. The dark yews and cypresses grew sadly and suitably, and little rose bushes stood amongst the graves, with the perpetual rose blossoming, that ever-flowering bloom, crinkled and classic. On the graves lay green chips, and in the vases rotted chrysanthemums. The churchyard extension lay over the yellow lichen-covered dense decaying churchyard wall: it looked like a field: it was a field, Constance Ollerenshaw’s grave was of yellow clay, for the earth here was yellow. Beyond the field was the river, that flowed in the end, wide and flat, into the North Sea, and beside it stood cows, black and white, as on a pastoral, a Doulton vase. (In the calm estuary of this river John Lincoln, lover of Constance Ollerenshaw, had drowned, not quite by accident, more than half a century ago. He had been drinking, or so it was said at the time.)

  Karel, raising his eyes from the too open earth, and staring at the middle distance where the cows browsed, peacefully, as though in another age, reflected on his own passion for the rural England he saw so rarely, his haven, his place of exile, his unknown land, his subject, his livelihood: and on Frances, who came from this land. The eighteenth-century cows munched on undisturbed, in their golden age, by the still waters, by the bending willows, in the autumn light. His own, and not his own. He was feeling better, out in the open air.

  Janet was gazing at some interesting withered plants growing at the foot of the wall. They were tall and grey and interesting with mildew of some sort: a silvery poisonous grey. She was thinking about the new houses that had been built just outside the church, on what had been a village green. They were all still for sale, though they had been finished for some time. No doubt a fancy price was being asked. She was not surprised that nobody wanted to buy them, for though the situation was pretty, the houses themselves were a most extraordinary shape: they had sliced and leaning roofs, like the blocks of cheese her father used to cut in the old shop in the old days, a shape perfectly appropriate for cheese, but not at all for houses. They had quite ruined the approach to the church. Barton had once been a pretty village. Why hadn’t Mark and his mates attached themselves to the preservation of Church Lane, Barton, instead of to the gravel pits and the shopping precincts?

  David Ollerenshaw was looking up at the weathercock, as the coffin was lowered: he noted that it was bright green. Whereas the four arrows on the church tower in the last village they had passed had been cleaned, and shone gold like shafts of sunlight. He thought about his gunmetal cigarette lighter, lying in a crevice on Handa Island, and wondered what colour it had turned by now. He also wondered what colour Aunt Constance had turned by now. How much pleasanter the inorganic is, than the organic. He thought Sir Frank Ollerenshaw a brave man, to have mastered the dissection of newts, and to have solved obscure and living mysteries of their bio-chemistry. He had never liked to admit it, even to himself, but he had never cared for zoology at school: squeamish, like a girl, he had flinched from the eyes of cows and the muscles of frogs. The inorganic was pure. He closed his hand in his pocket, on his stream topaz. Frances, he thought, was in a way her father’s daughter, for in her pocket she kept (she had showed him) some ancient knuckle bones and two teeth, as well as a more acceptable coin or two. Lucky charms, she had said.

  Hugh Ollerenshaw was staring at the earth at his feet, in which was embedded half a cigarette card (or was it a bubble gum card? they probably didn’t make cigarette cards these days, they must be period pieces by now, antique shop pieces, those toys of his childhood, fetching a fiver each on the Portobello Road). The card portrayed a footballer, in red and white gear. Arsenal. He peered more closely, but he couldn’t quite make out the muddy features. Peter Simpson? Peter Storey? He wondered which team was supported by the small vandals of the village of Barton.

  Frances Wingate, watching the coffin sink, hearing the rather well-chosen words of Mr Fox (a man who filled her with increasing admiration) was thinking, somewhat pedantically and quite happily, of the funeral customs of the Romans and the Phoenicians, the purpose of mourning, and the need for ritual. She felt quite content to see Constance sink so gracefully to rest. Death, in this style, held no horrors. Death had produced a great deal of beauty. The Appian Way had struck her many years ago as the most beautiful road in the world, despite the agony that had been suffered there, and she had always liked churchyards and cemeteries. Highgate. Mycenae. Pere Lachaise. The Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Gray’s churchyard of the Elegy. She had pottered around them all, taking an interest. Piacular rites. This country churchyard had an impressive, sequestered, harmonious, weathered beauty; one could not lie here restless, even though one no longer, so lying, joined the great majority. She spared a thought for John Lincoln, who could never have foreseen such an ending, and gazed at Karel, gazing at the cows. He had escaped the worst crime of history. He would escape Boston Harbour, too. She thought of death and Durkheim, thanked God for Karel’s salvation, and speculated about the origins of the religious sentiment. Ritual does not solve, but, like tears, it assuages, she thought.

  As for Sir Frank Ollerenshaw and Harold Barnard; who knows what they were thinking? Omniscience has its limits. The speculations of Sir Frank are beyond speculation, but Harold Barnard may well have been thinking about the Tockley smell, the price of sugar, the Common Market, the property market, the possible price of Mays Cottage, the income of a Vice-Chancellor, or the identity of th
e unexplained Karel Schmidt. He was probably thinking about all these things at once.

  The Reverend Miles Fox was wondering whether it would be improper to put his beret on when the so-called service was over. His ears were cold. The Reverend Miles Fox was a true believer, and simultaneously he prayed for the attention of God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. All of these three seemed to him equally significant. The Reverend Miles Fox was one of those who have an understanding of the Trinity. It had made his life simple in ecclesiastical terms, this understanding: but it was hard to get it across to his wife, his children, or to people like Dr Frances Wingate. He constantly felt that he was cheating, even within the Church: he had had it too easy, theologically. Why did he have no crises of faith, like other vicars? Why was it for him so plain and easy? Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Sometimes he thought that his wife was not even a Christian: she was simply a fellow traveller, with (poor woman) a miserably cheap ticket. He prayed for Constance Ollerenshaw, who had gone astray, but who had done no harm to anyone. Oh God, he prayed, lay her to rest, gather her to rest. Oh God, he commented, familiarly, they will surely not mind if I put on my beret. He found no obstacle, in his intercourse with God.

  It was tea-time, when they called at Eel Cottage. Janet, who knew the people who lived there, had rung Heather Stabler to ask if they could look in: she knew perfectly well that Heather would not mind, for it is not every day that a Vice-Chancellor with a title who has been accused of culpable neglect of elderly relatives arrives upon one’s doorstep in the East Midlands. She could well imagine the flurry of sandwich-making that Heather Stabler would be thrown into by the visit, but I am afraid the thought quite amused her—an amusement not very malicious, for she knew that Heather would acquit herself well with the sandwiches and the home-made bread, despite entreaties not to bother, and that in retrospect she would be glad of the opportunity. Janet thought she ought to go home to Hugh and her mother, who was minding the baby, but it was put to her that it would be much easier if she went at least as far as the Eel, to effect introductions. She saw the force of that, for she herself would not at all have liked to arrive upon a strange doorstep more or less unexpected, even if the doorstep had once been her own, and she could see that these other Ollerenshaws, however confident they might appear, might also have their hesitations. Indeed, she could see that Frances, upon closer observation, had many hesitations: her behaviour towards her father was quite subdued, and her behaviour towards Karel was carefully watchful.

  In the Eel, they drank jasmine tea, and ate cress sandwiches, and Sir Frank admired the new red Aga, and reminisced a little about the inconveniences of the old black range. He was clearly affected by the visit, and shook his head from time to time, and sighed. Hugh and Frances were allowed to go upstairs to see the bedroom where they used to sleep and discuss sex and the atom bomb: it was still a child’s bedroom, with a picture of Babar on the wall, a small bed, and a cot. ‘What are you going to do about Karel?’ said Hugh, as they stood there alone together in the little room. ‘I don’t quite know,’ said Frances, with unusual diffidence. ‘I’ll have to wait to see what he says, won’t I?’

  While the others talked of nursery gardening and its profits (Peter Stabler had just got in from work, with a new scheme for growing artichokes), Frances took Karel down to see the ditch. You must come, she said, it is the most important place of my childhood, all my behaviour will be made plain when you see it.

  They walked through the cabbage field. It was almost dark. Karel was feeling much better: he had recovered from Africa and cholera, and was beginning to feel pleased with his own gesture. It would pay off, shortly, he could see.

  The ditch was as disgusting as it had been earlier that summer, on Frances’s last visit. Gazing at its scummy surface, he said to her ‘Do you remember those frogs, darling? I often think of those frogs.’

  ‘It was partly those frogs that made me send you that postcard,’ she said. ‘I loved them, didn’t you? I love you too,’ she added.

  ‘So this is where you spent your childhood,’ he said, standing on the top of the muddy bank.

  ‘It used to be lovely, once,’ she said, and started to scramble down the steep bank to the water’s edge, to look more closely at the nasty mixture of garbage: it was dark, she slipped and fell. Ow, help, yelled Frances, as Karel, trying to catch her, slipped and fell after her, on top of her. Luckily; they missed the water. Karel held her, inside her jacket, outside her father’s green jersey. Help, help, said Frances, as they lay there rather awkwardly in the mud. What horrible places we always seem to end up in, said Karel.

  When they got back to the cottage, covered in dirt, Peter Stabler was agreeing with Hugh that despite the country’s grave economic crisis, there were stili plenty of people in the Midlands who would be delighted to buy artichokes, and that he would have a go. ‘What on earth have you two been up to?’ asked Hugh, as Karel and Frances appeared. ‘We fell over,’ said Frances.

  ‘We very nearly,’ said Karel, ‘fell right into the ditch.’

  They took in Mays Cottage on the way back to Tockley: it was too dark to see anything much, which pleased Frances, as she felt possessive about the place. Then they went back to the hotel, and had some drinks: Janet went home, and Sir Frank drove himself off, back to Wolverton, leaving the others to hold a small wake in Frances’s and Karel’s bedroom. Hugh, who had not touched a drop at lunch time, seemed less willing on this occasion to abstain, and David also was in a drinking mood. David, alone of all of them, had been somewhat depressed by the serious aspects of the day, and also by a brief encounter with the mother of Janet Bird, whom he recalled from his childhood. He felt sorry for Janet. He did not think life would offer her very much. On the other hand, he alone of all of them was likely to die, like Constance, quite alone, and quite unmissed, and the prospect had very slightly alarmed him. It was all very well, to take the long view. He had a large drink. There would be some bad moments, before the long view payed off.

  Hugh had intended to drive back to London that night, but drink overtook him. He rang Natasha, and said he would stay. Nobody was feeling very hungry, after the sandwiches at tea-time, so they ordered some more sandwiches, and ate them in the lounge (which was quiet, on a Monday), washed down with a bottle or two of wine. It took a long time to persuade Hugh that it was time to go to bed: a yawning waiter and the emptiness of the last bottle finally dislodged him. Karel and Frances went upstairs to bed. In bed, Frances turned on her elbow to Karel, and said, forestalling, ‘You know that postcard I sent you? It was partly the frogs, but it was partly a boy called Hunter Wisbech. Whatever did you say to Hunter Wisbech, about me?’

  Karel looked puzzled. ‘Whoever was Hunter Wisbech?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you must remember,’ said Frances. ‘He came to give a talk at your Poly. Just like me. Surely you remember him? I met him in February. On my lecture tour.’

  ‘Was he that young chap with the long curly hair who kept going on about how his wife had run off with the doctor?’

  ‘Yes, that was him.’

  ‘He wasn’t at all like you, love. He was a quite different kind of person. And I don’t remember saying anything much to him. He did all the talking. I think. Why, what did he say I said about you? I can’t have said anything awful about you, I never have done, in my life. I always defend you, you know.’

  Frances didn’t quite care for the notion that she was so constantly attacked, in her absence: nevertheless, she pursued the subject.

  ‘You must have got on very intimate terms with Hunter Wisbech, whose name you have so completely forgotten,’ she said, accusingly. ‘Because he said to me that you said to him that you loved me. He said it over lunch, too?’

  ‘Did he? Well, perhaps I did. What’s so surprising about that? I did love you, I still do. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘But it’s not the kind of thing that one says to a total stranger.’

  ‘No, perhaps not.’ Karel thought hard, tr
ying to remember: he was feeling much better, and was looking forward to getting this conversation over with, though at the same time it was a luxury, to delay the only possible conclusion by talk. ‘No,’ he said, ‘now I think about it, we did talk about you. It was he that brought the subject up, I think. We went off to the pub, after the lecture, and had a few drinks, and he said he knew Derek Palmer, who also knew you, and that’s how we got onto it. I didn’t say anything bad about you, you know. I never would. You mustn’t be paranoid, my darling.’

  ‘I’m not. I was just interested. You must have been drunk, both of you,’ she said, speculatively, imagining the scene.

  ‘Yes, I suppose we were.’ He reflected. ‘And anyway,’ he said, ‘how did you and Hunter get onto intimate terms about the subject of me, come to that? That’s not the kind of thing one discusses with a total stranger, either, is it?’

  As he spoke, an image of Hunter lying asleep on her bed in the hotel flashed across her mind: it seemed to have flashed simultaneously across Karel’s mind, too, because before she had time to answer his questions, he followed them up with, ‘And I hope to God you didn’t get too intimate with him, did you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, indignantly, as other images, of Galletti and Spirelli, of the Canadian camera man in Luxor, flashed rapidly across the screen of her brain: she hoped that Karel wasn’t receiving them too, but she knew he was: on the other hand, if he was receiving them at all he must surely be receiving everything else as well?

  ‘Oh God, Karel,’ she said, sinking down off her elbow into the narrow bed, ‘I missed you, I really missed you so much.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He was feeling quite himself again. He told her so. Yes, she said, burying herself against him under the white sheets, she could see that this was so.

  All in all, it had been quite an enjoyable day.