Cliff tells her she should go to London, take a week off, go and stay with Liz and do some shopping, go to the theatre, catch up with things. He cannot go because he cannot leave the business, does not like to leave the business. Cliff knows she is bored, underemployed, mildly depressed, that her mother gets on her nerves, that she needs a change. He is generous with his suggestions: the more worried he is about money, the more defiantly expensive his suggestions become. Shirley says she will go, perhaps in the autumn, not yet. She does not know if she wants to stay with Liz. She does not like her role as country mouse. But she thinks it wrong to lose touch with Liz, can see the probability of losing touch with Liz altogether, of their becoming strangers. Does she feel this because she sees her own boys growing away, estranging themselves from her, finding her and Cliff tedious? Cliff is quite a heavy father, and they resent it. If he is not careful, they will vanish.
Dully, she turns these things over. London, Regent’s Park, Harrods, Shaftesbury Avenue, Bond Street, the National Theatre. What excuse shall she offer to her mother? Her mother claimed to have been to London in 1937 for the Coronation but frankly Shirley cannot imagine this. She cannot imagine her mother anywhere other than in Abercorn Avenue, though she has been known to venture as far as the shops on the corner of Victoria Street and once or twice, astonishingly, to Silcock’s department store in the city centre. Perhaps I’d better go to London, make myself go to London, Shirley decides. I don’t want to get too like Ma.
She crosses to the sink, pours away half her unwanted cup of instant coffee, washes the cup, washes a foil milk bottle top, puts her foot on the pedal bin, opens it, drops in the foil top, gazes absently for a moment at an empty egg box, an empty tomato tin, the scrapings of last night’s spaghetti, some apple peel, some kitchen roll, a browning lettuce leaf, a cigarette carton, a tonic bottle. She wishes they would not throw tonic bottles in the pedal bin: she likes to take them to the newly provided Bottle Bank. She thinks of rescuing it, but does not. I don’t want to get too like Ma, she repeats to herself: but even as she rehearses these words, a strange, perverse, numbing respect for her mother seeps through her: how she has persisted, her mother, in being what she is, how stubbornly she has refused to divert herself with trivia, how bleakly and boldly she has stared over the years into the heart of nothingness. For it is trivial, it is all trivial, coffee mornings, eating, drinking, the National Theatre, shopping outings, reading books, embroidery, evening classes, country walks, wiping surfaces, emptying waste-paper baskets, Bond Street, Regent’s Park, saving bottles for the Bottle Bank, gardening, telephone calls, listening to the radio, Terry Wogan, going to the hairdresser, chatting to the window-cleaner, giving small donations to Oxfam, throwing away silver foil, collecting silver foil, cleaning the bath. It is nothing, all of it nothing. Sex and small children had provided a brief purpose, the energy they generated had made sense of the world for a while, had forged a pattern, a community: clinics, playgrounds, parks, nursery groups, mothers waiting at the school gate: and now, nothing. An idle flutter of garbage over an empty pavement. Coldness, nothingness, grips Shirley as she stands in her kitchen. She knows herself to be biologically dead. Her spirit shudders: she has seen a vision, of waste matter, of meaningless after-life, of refuse, of decay. An egg box and a tin can in a blue and white plastic pedal bin. So might one stand for ever. She lifts her foot. The lid drops.
Liz regretted her acceptance of Ivan Warner’s invitation to lunch. Lunching was usually a mistake: seeing Ivan was almost invariably a mistake. Ivan always had lunch: it was his job. Liz had no wish whatsoever to see Ivan, or to eat lunch. Nevertheless, here she found herself, at one o’clock on a weekday in Soho in late spring, settling herself on to a comfortable upholstered banquette, shaking out a large thick well-ironed dark-pink damask napkin, smiling politely, professing herself delighted to see Ivan, and allowing herself to order a Campari and soda. It arrived, clinking, misted, in a long-stemmed tulip glass, with a slice of orange. How had it happened? How had he managed it? She gazed at his unattractive, malevolent, highly coloured, smug face with curiosity. It was almost as though Ivan had some power of blackmail over her, over all those he held in thrall: but what could the secret be, when she could think of nothing dishonourable that he could know of her, when she knew so many dishonourable things of him? And why was it that she felt, in his company, a sense of illicit, uncomfortable pleasure, a sense of slightly corrupt collusion? Was the very fact of her presence, here, in this restaurant, a shared crime, did he know her distaste, her reluctance, was it because of her distaste, her reluctance, that he continued to press her, continued to seek her out? Or could it be that she actually wanted to be cross-questioned by Ivan Warner about her divorce proceedings, about how Charles was getting on in New York, about Henrietta Latchett, about the children’s response to Charles’s move? She had observed in some of her patients a guilty pleasure in surrender of secrets: was Ivan Warner her analyst, her therapist, her confessor? Thoughtfully, she sipped her cold bitter drink: thoughtfully, she smiled at Ivan. She had not seen him for months. Not since the New Year’s Eve party. There was a lot of gossip to catch up on.
Ivan raised his own frosty glass of gin, tonic and lemon wedge, and saluted her. ‘Cheers,’ he said. Liz smiled coldly. ‘Basilisk,’ said Ivan. ‘Cheshire cat,’ said Ivan. She smiled more warmly. The waiter hovered, and Ivan waved him away, which caused Liz to glance surreptitiously at her watch: she had to be back by three thirty, she could tell already that he would try to make her late. A battle of wills. ‘Well?’ said Ivan. ‘Well?’ said Liz.
Ivan proceeded to interrogate her about her own plans, her own affairs, her own thoughts of remarriage, picking up a theme which he had attempted to explore at the party itself: she had assumed then, in panic, that he had introduced it through malice, but now, in the calm of luncheon, nibbling a stick of raw celery, she thought perhaps that he was genuinely interested, genuinely curious, genuinely trying to wheedle information from her. After all, how could he know that she had nothing to divulge? Gallantly Ivan offered suggestions to people her supposed private life: he brought up once again, for example, Gabriel Denham, an old enemy of Charles’s? A good-looking man, Liz conceded, though a bit gone to seed: and no fool either – had Ivan seen his series on Pakistan? They discussed Gabriel, his first wife Phillipa (now an Orange Person, according to Ivan), his second wife Jessica, his affair with his secretary. A bit of a falling off there, they concluded. They moved on to Anthony Keating (too mad for me, said Liz, picking at her salade tiède, admiring the dull green-red tints of the fashionable leaves: by which she meant that she liked Anthony Keating and did not wish to discuss him with Ivan). Humphrey Potter, then? Or Jules Griffin? No? Liz smiled appreciatively. What about Otto Werner? But Otto Werner, Liz said, has a wife. Whatever do you mean by that? asked Ivan. He has a proper wife, repeated Liz, forbiddingly, reprovingly. But surely, Ivan insisted, there must be somebody. No, said Liz. Nobody at all. I have lost all interest, said Liz, in the pleasures of the flesh. She sipped the white burgundy, sampled the sweetbreads. They were excellent. Excellent, she nodded at Ivan, giving credit where it was due. How dull, said Ivan. No, it is peaceful, said Liz: and as she spoke, suddenly recalled that she had that morning received from Stephen Cox a copy of an article he had mentioned to her that evening, some weeks ago, at Alix’s, and with it a note saying that he had wanted to telephone her but dared not as she was always so busy: could she let him know if she would like to go out to dinner sometime, and talk about Japan? He had promised her contacts in Japan.
She did not mention Stephen Cox to Ivan, but attempted to change the subject by mentioning Japan. Ivan was not interested in Japan, as he had never been there. He was interested only in Home Affairs. He quickly manoeuvred the conversation back to the domestic front: how was Charles, how did she, Liz, get on with Henrietta, when was the marriage to be, had Liz ever met Peter Latchett? Liz latched on to Peter Latchett, a relatively harmless topic: no, she had not met him, wh
at was he like? Ivan offered a thumbnail sketch. Bad blood, the Latchetts: drinking, gambling, feckless. Not that Henrietta’s blood was that much better: lucky she was too old to have children, or poor Charles might find himself saddled with a few little delinquents. Had she not heard of the skeletons in Henrietta’s cupboard? Had she never heard the story of the old marquess, the grandfather? Ivan rattled on, assured of his audience. Madness, violence, crime: as in all the best family trees. There was even a candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper. But if you look at any family, Liz mildly protested, you find the same horrors. Not in your family or mine, my dear, said Ivan, pouring her another glass of wine, ignoring her feeble gesture of protest: good middle-class stock, we are, not interbred degenerates. Look at your wonderful children, said Ivan.
But Ivan’s mind was wandering again: he was not interested in Liz’s wonderful children, they were not yet newsworthy, they were ordinary, hard-working, sober young people: and he bounced back again after the briefest courtesy discussion of them to the topic that had been fascinating the whole of London, smart and un-smart, lunching and non-lunching: the new horror committed by the Horror of Harrow Road, who had claimed another victim. Everybody claimed to be horrified, everybody was delighted: except, presumably, the victim herself, who had been found, said Ivan (wiping his lips delicately on the dark-pink napkin) sitting in a waste lot in the driver’s seat of a wheel-less Notting Hill Carnival float, headless, neatly wearing a safety belt with her head by her side on the passenger’s seat. Ivan recounted to Liz more details, that the press had not thought fit to release. She accused him of making them up. He bridled, and swore that he had not, and she had to admit that they were convincingly circumstantial: so either they are true, Ivan, she said, genially, or you must be the Horror of Harrow Road yourself, in fact or in imagination. She called for coffee, and said she must be on her way.
Ivan would not relinquish the Horror so readily. He wanted (perhaps genuinely?) to know her views: were the attacks racist as well as sexist, was it an accident that most of the victims had been black, what was the significance, psychologically, of the severed-head motif, was the attacker mad, and what did Liz mean by mad? Liz responded at first vaguely by saying that perhaps after all Esther Breuer ought to give up walking along the Harrow Road by herself late at night, but then attached herself more generously to the subject of madness and psychopathology in general and to the history of the McNaghten Rules in particular. Liz and her ex-husband Edgar Lintot share the view, as Liz now explained to Ivan, that not much is gained by the use of the word ‘mad’ to describe deviations from the norm as wide as that of Virginia Woolf, her unfortunate cousin J. K. Stephen (also, oddly, a candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper), and the supposed Horror of Harrow Road, but that does not mean that the rejection of the term implies that the Jack the Rippers of this world are not suffering from diminished responsibility by reason of insanity: insane they are, responsible they are not, and let us forget the emotive word ‘madness’ in this context. But, argued Ivan, did that mean that she and Edgar thought all murderers were insane and of diminished responsibility? Liz prevaricated slightly, for in fact she and Edgar are, in a sense, of this opinion, but in a sense that would need careful presentation to a layman, and she did not wish to see herself quoted in the press on the topic: but Ivan, to do him justice where one could, was not a man for hanging and flogging, for interminable prison sentences and short sharp shocks, and the severed-head business had suggested to him as strongly as it had to Liz and Edgar that the Horror of Harrow Road was probably not quite in his right mind. ‘Not that that makes it any nicer for the corpse,’ said Ivan, as Liz glanced again, this time ostentatiously, at her watch. ‘Ivan, I must go,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a consultation at three thirty, and I can’t be late.’ He rose to his feet, escorted her to the door, saw her on to the shabby, sunlit, sex-postered street: ‘It’s been a delight to see you, Liz,’ he said, ‘as ever’ – taking her hand, squeezing it, reaching up slightly to kiss her cheek – ‘it’s a pity we didn’t have more time, I wanted to ask you where you’re going to live when you’ve got rid of that great gloomy house of yours. Such a dark, depressing, lumpen-bourgeois street, I’ve always thought, haven’t you? You must be so glad to be able to get away at last – do keep in touch, let me know what’s happening, won’t you? You know I like to be in the know.’ And she walked briskly off, blinking, in the bright light, furious, amused, outraged: his timing, one had to admit, was inspired.
Esther Breuer stared meditatively at a postcard from the National Portrait Gallery, portraying the diarist John Evelyn with his long thin white hand resting elegantly, caressingly, upon a yellow-brown skull. She was in the process of composing a palindromic message to send to Claudio, who was attending a conference in Grenoble. Esther highly prized the art of the postcard, the new epistolary genre of the twentieth century, and had a fine collection of items, many of them from Claudio himself, who could pun in several languages, not all of them decipherable by Esther.
Esther was feeling unaccountably depressed. She had been haunted all day by an appalling dream, a dream so bad that she thought she might ring Liz up that evening and tell her about it. She thought it was indirectly connected with Crivelli and John the Baptist: in her pursuit of materials related to the possible Crivelli panel (which she was inclined to consider authentic) she had had cause to look through various collections of portrayals of John the Baptist – preaching, baptizing, denouncing, and headless. One severed head led to another, and she had spent hours musing over Judith and Holofernes, over Perseus and Medusa, over David and Goliath, over Caravaggio and Artemesia Gentileschi and Giordano. So it was not perhaps surprising that she had dreamed that she was walking along the canal bank where it passed under Ladbroke Grove, at the Harrow Road end of the canal – a walk she often took, particularly at this pleasant time of year – and there had seen, on the towpath, a severed head. It had spoken to her. It had asked her, civilly, menacingly, obsequiously, imperiously – oh, in an extraordinarily chilling, real, memorable mixture of tones – to take it up, to care for it. It was the head of a young man, a bearded young man, and it sat on the towpath on the dry flat yellowish severed stalk of its neck, and spoke. But I cannot, she had protested: then, feebly, apologizing, I would be afraid to hurt you. But the head would not relinquish her so easily. I will teach you, he had said, softly, reasonably, remorselessly. It is easy: I will teach you. Pick me up. I cannot, I cannot, you must understand, I am a little afraid, afraid of causing you pain, said Esther: terrified, unwilling to show her panic and fear and revulsion: and the head had raised itself on a bloody shoulder, a torn ragged bloody arm, and moved towards her, and in terror she had woken, shaking with fear, cold with sweat, her own arm (caught at a strange angle under her pillow) prickling and tense. Well, she had calmed herself: well. Too many John the Baptists on platters, too many horror comics of the seicento and the settecento. Pins and needles in her arm, and perhaps half a vague memory of that legless man who sat begging at the door of the Girolamini in Naples, who sold her a postcard of Reni’s Baptist? That implausible trunk of a man, grinning in his wheelchair? But the dream would not go away with reason, it haunted, it spoke, it opened its lips at her. And she began to connect it with Claudio: reluctantly, reluctantly. Esther, it must be said, loved Claudio, and she knew that Claudio was a dead man. His Satanism, which she had once thought an elegant affectation, a literary joke, was, she had learned too late, a true sickness, a disease of the spirit. She never spoke of these things to anyone, ever, for she and Claudio had an understanding, of a dark, shared, seclusion: an erotic, a satanic understanding. In her it was love, in him it was sickness. Or so she now thought. And this severed head that spoke to her from the pavement, saying pick me up, pick me up, care for me, was it not the sick, mad head of Claudio? She could not, she could not. She could not endure the physical intimacy, the daily intimacy, the perverted intimacy. She loved, but she could not save. How could he speak to her thus? She had s
trayed too far into darkness with Claudio. She longed for the voice of daylight, of reason, of the fresh air. And why now, why this dream now? Was it because of Claudio’s sister Elena, who had said to Esther, suddenly, in the daylight of the bright Bolognese morning, over coffee and bread and butter: Esther, I am worried about Claudio, I am a little worried about Claudio, I am so glad to have met you at last, to know that you are there . . . and her dark eyes had fixed themselves upon Esther’s, wide with appeal. And Esther had known herself helpless. She had dropped her eyes, had looked down at the innocent crumbs on her green and gold rimmed plate.
Why should she collude with Claudio, why should she send him a skull and a palindrome? She looked down now at poor long-dead John Evelyn. Because it is too late, that is why. Too late, too late, too late. She had colluded for too long, she had entered his dusty, airless, candlelit world forever. She loved him. She loves him.
But in the evening, she rang Liz. They chatted for a while, Liz confessing, guiltily, to her lunch with Ivan, Esther proffering some misleading rigmarole about her potted palm and its response to Greengro Crystals: and then Esther said ‘I had this dream, last night, about a severed head.’
‘Well,’ said Liz, to Esther’s astonishment, ‘I’m not at all surprised. And I hope that that teaches you not to walk alone so late in such insalubrious districts. It is 1980, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Esther.
‘Well, you know, severed heads are quite topical,’ said Liz, thinking that Esther was merely being evasive again: ‘not to say topographical, from your point of view.’
‘What do you mean?’ repeated Esther, without any evasiveness at all, with a directness that Liz had not heard from her for some time. And thus Liz was obliged to remind her of the story of the Horror of Harrow Road, a story which in Liz’s view Esther knew quite well: indeed, she was sure they had often discussed it. Esther was obliged to listen, apparently dumbfounded. ‘But you must have known,’ said Liz, again and again, at the end of Esther’s rebuttal: ‘how can you not have known?’
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