In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  ‘You couldn’t have made all these from what was in the kitchen,’ James challenged Laura. ‘It beats the loaves-and-fishes miracle. It’s just not possible. You must have prepared them earlier.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Laura assured him. ‘I’ve used what you had in the cupboard. People always have more than they think.’

  ‘You must have smuggled the ingredients in about your person,’ he persisted.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Laura laughed. ‘It’s just a matter of imagination and practice.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ James told her, putting the tray on the bedside table. ‘We’re going to have to search you for further contraband.’

  ‘I’m naked!’ she declared.

  ‘I know,’ he said sternly. ‘I’ve sent for a sniffer dog. In fact, here I am: it’s me. Don’t move a muscle,’ he murmured, licking his lips, adding: ‘I’ll be back in a while,’ as he slid down her body.

  It was late when Laura left. Her departure was a lengthy, extended operation because all the way across James’ flat, down the metal steps, through the alley by the side of the chemist, onto the street, along the pavement to her car, and even getting inside it, James had to keep stopping her for a last goodnight kiss, because letting her go necessitated willpower greater than he possessed. When, however, with a heroic effort James allowed her to close the door and start the engine, and had raised his hand to wave her goodbye, Laura suddenly opened the door and jumped out.

  James assumed she needed one more of his irresistible kisses, but instead she hugged him, tightly. She held him long enough for him to look over her shoulder at the roofs of buildings against the urban night sky, and to experience the rare conviction for a man that he is in the exact place on this planet he’s supposed to be.

  Finally Laura released her grip, looked at him for a moment, said: ‘Thank you, James,’ jumped into her car and drove away.

  Laura came to James’ flat on Tuesday evening, and again on Thursday – James wouldn’t come to the cottage in the grounds of the house. Laura made her way down on Sunday too.

  ‘What’s happened to Sunday lunch up there?’ James asked. ‘I thought it was a sacrosanct institution.’

  ‘It still is,’ Laura told him. ‘Only Harry cooks it. He used to make an Indian meal on Saturday evenings and it just got moved to Sunday lunch somehow. Fortunately.’

  ‘You had an Indian last night,’ said James.

  ‘How do you know?’ Laura demanded.

  ‘Your armpits smell of pungent spices,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Laura apologized, retreating.

  ‘No, come here, it’s wonderful,’ he assured her. ‘Now I want to eat all of you.’

  * * *

  Without either of them planning to, James and Laura were slipping into a semi-secretive relationship. Laura didn’t want any disruption of Adamina’s universe: she’d seen how acquaintances, single mothers like herself, had brought into their home a succession of men, of surrogate father figures their children became more attached to than they did and then had to let go. Stability, she believed, was vital and she was determined to provide it for her daughter – especially now that Robert, the child’s father, was part of her life.

  Laura knew, though, that James was more than a passing lover, and she realized she was duplicating the stealth of her relationship with Robert; she must prove to herself that she didn’t seek this furtiveness. There was also the danger of neglecting Adamina in the time she spent with James – quite apart from imposing upon Natalie on the Sundays Adamina wasn’t with Robert, and having to find other baby-sitters in the week.

  The fifth of November was on a Thursday that year, 1992: on Saturday, the seventh, the annual Round Table bonfire and fireworks display was held in the park on the hill between the house and the town centre. It had been an event fixed in the family’s calendar and now a new generation was enjoying it. Harry and Alice were taking their bevy of children; Simon hadn’t missed a single Guy Fawkes in his life; Natalie was going with her new girlfriend, Lucy. The one person who wouldn’t be going was Charles, who despite his love of social gatherings had a positive dislike of fireworks and had been relieved when his children had grown old enough to go on their own.

  Laura chose this moment for James and Adamina to meet. She brought her down for tea at his flat first of all, to introduce them properly.

  ‘James is your uncle,’ Laura explained to Adamina. ‘He’s your father’s brother.’

  ‘Why don’t you live in the house?’ Adamina demanded.

  ‘That’s a long story,’ James told her. ‘I’m too old,’ he decided.

  ‘Are you older than Uncle Simon?’ Adamina asked him.

  ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘Why does he live in the house then?’

  ‘Well, he’s happy there,’ James replied.

  Mostly, though, Adamina was quiet. She replied tersely to James’ solicitous questions about her school, and then she observed James and Laura eating, talking, gesturing. Reserved though they were, she saw their easy familiarity. When they’d finished and cleared away and were about to put on coats and scarves Laura went to the loo. Adamina watched James tying the laces of his boots.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ she told him.

  He looked up slowly. ‘Well, that’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Adamina replied.

  They walked from the flat. It was a damp evening with fog in the air that was dispersed by the streetlights and the heat rising from the urban surface of the earth.

  The park, though, was a large, open field on the side of the hill, enclosed by iron railings. James and Laura and Adamina walked towards where the bonfire stood. They couldn’t see it; they knew where it was because they’d each noticed it accruing over the previous weeks, a mound of tyres and pallets, furniture and timber.

  It was dark, and thus difficult to tell how thick the fog was – it was surely inconceivable that it could sabotage the fireworks display, on this one day of the year.

  Others were walking up the park around them: voices spoke as if from invisible people, who then appeared like apparitions and faded away as if into another dimension. Suddenly a technicolour porcupine passed before them – a girl selling battery-operated lit-up plastic quills; Adamina took the one James bought her and swirled it in the air. A man sold fluorescent headbands.

  They came through the back of the crowd, already massed behind a rope-line, and pushed through near to the front for a better view for Adamina. It was to little avail. The fog seemed to thicken by the minute: they saw the first fireworks being lit and shooting upwards, but very soon they – and the rest of the crowd – waited for the whoosh of the fireworks rising and then gazed up at vague glows and will-o’-the-wisp colours in the sky above them through a thick blanket of fog; and they heard muffled bangs and explosions, as if a great battle were taking place not far away, there in the fog somewhere, another Battle of Britain of flak and blitz and dogfights in the skies.

  Small children cried, whether through fear or simply disappointment it was hard to tell. But they stayed where they were, the whole crowd, it seemed, enveloped in fog, imbued with a sort of stoic English optimism in the face of unfavourable nature. It would have taken little, James thought, for them to have started singing. As it was he could hear the odd quip thrown into the fog (‘Guy Fawkes would have made his escape in this weather’) that symbolized a kind of dumb defiance. James, who’d never felt patriotic, now (perhaps because he couldn’t see the crowd he was a part of) felt a strange rush of glad emotion. He put his arm around Laura’s shoulders, and kissed her – and then felt her pull away. A pang of disappointment saddened him, but it was dispelled as he looked down and saw Adamina glaring up at him, and realized she’d tugged her mother away.

  The crowd’s defiance was rewarded by the bonfire. It was so huge and so hot a blaze it seemed to burn the fog off and they saw it clearly. Flames swirled like liquid and showers of red sparks flew upwards. The Guy
on top smoked, tottered and fell, to a great cheer. Adamina’s enthralled face glowed orange.

  James walked Laura and Adamina up the hill, to the door in the wall near to their cottage.

  ‘Say thank you to James,’ Laura told Adamina.

  ‘Thank you to James,’ Adamina addressed the ground.

  James’ grin pre-empted admonition from Laura. She kissed James lightly and whispered: ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘It was all right,’ he assured her.

  Laura looked at him, and then said to Adamina: ‘You go on ahead, I’ll be right behind you, Mina. Pour us both a glass of milk.’ Adamina stalled a second, then did as she was told. Laura turned back to James. ‘I want to be with you tonight,’ she told him. ‘But I’m not going to leave Mina. Can you come back later?’

  ‘I want to see you,’ James replied, pondering. ‘I don’t want to go back in there. You know that.’

  ‘I know, but don’t you think it’s worth it?’

  ‘OK,’ he decided. ‘I’ll come.’

  A couple of hours later James cycled back up the hill and along the lane that ran around the outside of the lower wall, and chained his bike to a lamp post a hundred yards from the door in the wall near Laura’s cottage. He almost tiptoed on the tarmac; he felt like a cat-burglar, creeping into his past.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ James muttered to himself. He pushed open the unlocked door and slipped in. Two or three odd windows in the big house were lit, but he could see no movement nor hear any sound. The sky was overcast, the night dark; James was glad, not just because he couldn’t be seen but also because he couldn’t see much either. He could barely make out the whole outline of the big house itself. It seemed smaller than he remembered.

  James knocked stealthily on the door of Laura’s cottage and she let him in.

  ‘Hi,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  She was smiling at him. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It wasn’t.’ They went upstairs, where Adamina was safely asleep.

  ‘You know, I’m thirty-five,’ James told Laura. ‘I walked out of the house when I was eighteen. I haven’t been back for seventeen years.’

  ‘Hey, James,’ Laura said, ‘I’m impressed. I didn’t realize you were a mathematician, too. I had no idea.’

  ‘But I’ve been away almost as long as I was there growing up.’

  ‘I can see that. Do you want a prize for your pigheadedness or what?’

  ‘I don’t want any prizes,’ he said. ‘Apart from you.’

  They made love, and afterwards James felt a strong desire to flee: whether it was to get out of the grounds of the house, or to run away from Laura, he wasn’t sure. He waited till she had fallen asleep, and then slipped out of her cottage.

  Chapter 10

  THE RIVAL

  IT WAS A good thing it was the autumn, with night falling ever earlier, since James refused to come to the cottage in daylight. He slipped through the gate in the wall in the evening, having waited for darkness all day, increasingly impatient. He arrived at Laura’s door in a state of agitation so close to being bad-tempered that he shook himself to get rid of it before going in; only to find that Laura appeared to be in a similar condition, one that could only be dispelled with someone else’s help.

  During those nights Laura discovered that it was possible to carry James to the brink of climax and then hold him there indefinitely in a state of excruciating bliss by the most subtle means; even when she’d made him take a vow of silence, so that he wasn’t allowed to give directions, or inform her as to the state of his innermost needs of the moment, she was able to discern exactly where he was.

  While James sometimes saw that Laura was no longer with him, her eyes had glazed over and her skin was changing colour, and she’d gone off towards a distant planet in some other universe, some place that had nothing to do with him any more, except for the fact that he was steering her towards it.

  Afterwards she leaned against him, and he said nothing so that she could come back to earth in silence, until she let him know she had returned to reality. ‘This is Ground Control,’ James whispered. ‘We have contact.’

  They’d discovered a shared propensity for lovemaking, to the extent that each doubted their own relative inexperience, never mind the other’s.

  ‘Who taught you that, James?’ Laura asked. ‘That Italian girl?’

  ‘You did,’ he assured her.

  ‘How do you know what you know?’ James demanded in turn. ‘You said you never went to college, but I think you’ve done some Open University degree in pleasing a man. Was that man with the silver hair your tutor, or what?’

  ‘It’s you,’ Laura replied. ‘It’s you and me.’

  ‘Do other people have this?’ James wondered. ‘Is it normal?’

  ‘No, it’s unique in human history,’ Laura laughed. ‘People say they have. Now I know what they mean. At least I think I do. If it’s the same as I feel. You never know with words.’

  ‘You must have read things I haven’t,’ James told her.

  ‘I’ll read them to you, James, in the bath. Now stay there. Don’t move. And don’t say anything,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t wake Adamina,’ she added as she rose and proceeded to embark upon the leisurely process of covering James’ body with tiny agonizing bites.

  During the day Laura went about her work in a semi-conscious state, relying on recipes rather than her palate and the inspiration of the moment. It was a kind of relaxed exhaustion. In contrast to the dark months following Adamina’s birth, though, she had no wish to escape it in sleep; instead she wallowed in a paradoxical languorous vitality, at one with herself and the world.

  James had never photographed with such intensity and yet, at the same time, a kind of carefree abandon. He left his flat as soon as he’d had breakfast and stalked the town as if driven, as if time were running out, returning with rolls of exposed film he developed and then left in the darkroom for weeks, too busy to make even contact sheets. And yet the endeavour felt effortless. He sought and saw and clicked the shutter release.

  James was spreading out from the road to chronicle the streets of the whole town, a mad enterprise except that he was no longer mad. He was simply doing what he now knew he had to do. He took pictures of traffic wardens and policemen, taxi drivers and street-cleaners, pensioners and children, people waiting for buses to come and parents waiting for school to finish.

  He took only people: morose anglers like monks at prayer along the river; a young man with a tattooed face, and other hopeless drunks and dreamless beggars; acid-heads tripping through Shutterbuck Woods; Greens swimming naked in the gravel pit north of town; clerks and secretaries snoozing at lunchtime in the parks; stoop-shouldered barge-dwellers along the canal.

  In addition to his restless activity around town, James had a new subject: Laura. His only previous attempt at photographing a woman as such had been a fuzzy picture of a blonde girl on a horse about to jump over his prone body. He hadn’t taken more than odd snaps of his few girlfriends since then, but nowadays he had his camera to hand all the time, and first took nude photos of Laura.

  ‘How come you’re not fat like your mother, being a cook and all?’ James demanded.

  ‘I take after my father, of course,’ Laura said.

  James found that he could happily watch Laura reading or cooking – her almond eyes, small nose and mouth with slightly jutting teeth – engrossed for long periods in the changing expressions of her countenance and the movement of her facial muscles. Motherhood and time had thickened her waist and rounded her belly. When James flicked through a women’s magazine left on her kitchen table for its recipes, he wondered why the fashion editors chose models who looked like dolls, when the only result was for ordinary women to feel compelled to try and look like mannequins themselves through cruel diets, punishing exercise and constricting clothes.

  In a sudden illuminating flash James sa
w a complex conspiracy theory laid bare, one involving magazine editors, plastic surgeons, multinational make-up manufacturers, imperious supermodels and their millionaire paramours. When he tried to unravel it again, however, with Laura’s help, she misunderstood what he was saying.

  ‘You think I’m ugly?’ she demanded.

  ‘No, Laura,’ James countered, ‘that’s exactly the point, I think you’re just beautiful. They’re the ones who’ve got it wrong. Those models are so perfect they’re uninteresting.’

  ‘It’s my teeth, isn’t it?’ she suggested. ‘Or is it my knock-knees? I know my joints crack.’

  ‘No, you’re adorable,’ he assured her.

  Laura nodded, in a way that showed she was offended. ‘Well, if you don’t like what you see, you know what you can do,’ she told him curtly.

  ‘Good grief,’ James murmured. But quietly. When Laura was annoyed with him she bent back the little finger of his right hand at an angle once shown her by Natalie, which made him squeak like a stricken bat and drop to his knees, from where he begged for mercy and vowed to do anything in the world she wanted, damn it, anything at all, if she’d only release his little finger.

  After he’d undertaken to iron Laura’s clothes for the rest of her natural life and massage her feet with lavender oil every evening, and she had let him go, James said: ‘That’s some trick. It’s a good thing I had my other fingers crossed.’ Before she could grab one of his vulnerable digits again he threw them in the air and exclaimed: ‘No, but you’re right! I agree with whatever you said!’

  Laura put her arms around him and held him tight against her, with a smirk at the sides of her mouth and a pressure against his lower regions that made desire swell down there, and said: ‘Well, in that case you better prove it.’

  His favourite photograph was of Laura laughing, her head thrown back, almond eyes shining, with two tiny dimples visible just above her cheekbones.

  Adamina was the single child of a single mother, already, at the age of six, her mother’s best friend. Laura asked Adamina’s opinion about which clothes to wear; whether this dresser wouldn’t be better in the kitchen than the sitting-room; what to get Natalie for her birthday; was it a good idea to pay to convert her VW Golf to unleaded petrol? Should they go to France next year or to Sweden to try the raw herring and reindeer meat? Adamina listened to her mother’s questions calmly, considered them in thoughtful silence, and gave advice in a voice that combined the cadence of a child with the forbearance of a patient sister, and also contained a slight lisp.