A Sweet Obscurity

by Patrick Gale

  Too impatient to wait for the computer to warm up afresh, she ran downstairs and riffled through her piles of notes to uncover the original bass part, still tucked in its plastic Ziploc bag. Was it really possible? She stared at it hard, willing it to give up its secret, heedless of the fact that Dido had turned the sound on the television back up so that an intergalactic battle was raging about them.

  The first verse was written under the music, the second, below the score, had been artfully centred so as to throw one off the scent with the misaligning of the crucial letters. Ybot was Toby backwards. Stupid of her not to see that earlier. And Oege? She grabbed the Latin dictionary and almost tore its cheap little pages in her hurry. Oege was Egeo backwards which meant…Which meant I am destitute or, with the genitive, I auctoritate, whatever that meant. She was sure there were more meanings. Latin words, like Greek or English ones, acquired other meanings with time and usage.

  Toby. My Lord Beaufort’s godlike brother? Or a lover’s pet name for him? It would not take a detective to check that one. She frowned in her effort to drag some significance into shape. Rosy. Rose Mary. The niece. The niece he passed off as, and loved as, his own. Amo Rosy. Amo-r osam would have been more convincing grammatically. And hidden in the other verse, his not so hidden adored downfall? The beauty of it was that the reference to loving the daughter-cum-niece was tucked away in the verse that spoke of the wrench of leaving his heart behind him in town, while the reference to Toby was hidden in the verse that spoke of softer pleasures and a sweet obscurity. The compensatory pleasures not of a new erotic love but of unexpected fatherhood. Pain and pleasure, remembered and present love simultaneously registered.

  But why egeo? I am destitute? Destitute without Toby? Or impoverished because of what involvement with Toby brought upon him? Life at court was undoubtedly expensive but it offered unique chances of preferment and patronage which could never be his on a remote Cornish estate.

  The noise from the programme was silenced so suddenly that Eliza looked up. Dido had switched the television off and was sitting up, listening as keenly as a hunting dog.

  ‘What?’ Eliza asked her.

  ‘Julia,’ Dido said.

  ‘It can’t be. They don’t have the address here.’

  ‘I know her laugh.’ Dido lurched to her feet and began swinging out.

  ‘You shouldn’t go outside.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m going upstairs. If she asks, I’m asleep or something.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I don’t want to see her. Okay?’

  As Dido dragged her plaster cast and filthy mood upstairs, Eliza slipped into the hall and peered through the grimy window across the yard.

  It was indeed Julia, looking at once countrified and elegant, and she was chatting to Pearce and, evidently taken with him, was backing him up against one of his tractor wheels with her charms. Pearce made best-be-getting-on noises and climbed up in his cab to drive back to the cauliflower field with another still of plants. Julia stood watching him go then gave the house an appraising stare. When she came no closer but started back towards her hire car, Eliza hurried out after her.

  ‘What a surprise!’ she called.

  ‘Eliza!’ Julia seemed so happy she began to bend forward to kiss then remembered who she was talking to and made do with a sisterly pat on the shoulder. ‘I know you’re hard at work so I didn’t like to butt in on you but I thought, since you and Piers –’

  ‘Pearce.’

  ‘Pearce,’ she sighed. ‘How lovely. He’s gorgeous! I thought, since Giles and I are so nearby, we should have the two of you over for dinner tomorrow. At the hotel. Nothing too smart but the food’s great. Pearce seemed to think it would be fine.’

  ‘Er. Yes. Sure. Look, Julia, I wonder if you could ask Giles –’

  ‘How’s the poor invalid?’

  ‘What? Oh, Dido. She’s fine. Cross but fine. You can imagine. Look, I need to know some Latin and I wondered if you could ask Giles.’

  ‘Giles? Latin?’

  ‘He’s good at it. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Another hidden depth.’

  ‘Ask him if there are any meanings of egeo besides I am destitute.’

  Julia frowned fleetingly, testing the message for barbs.

  ‘I’d ask him myself,’ Eliza explained, ‘but, well, you’re here and I don’t have the hotel number and –’ she broke off, watching Julia’s automatic examination of her and realised she probably hadn’t touched her hair since getting up. She was also in bare feet and Pearce’s manky dressing gown. She guessed this was gratifying to Julia’s self-love because Julia smiled almost warmly and said, ‘You’re looking so well!’

  ‘But you’ll ask him?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will. And we’ll see you tomorrow evening. Eight, say? Can someone babysit Dido? I thought just grown-ups for a change.’

  ‘No. Of course. That’s fine. Er. I’d offer you coffee but…’

  ‘Scholar at work. I’ll get out of your hair. See you.’

  She shut part of her skirt in the car door. It flapped as she drove off. That and the invitation to dinner and Julia’s general demeanour were so entirely out of character, weird even, that Eliza wondered briefly if Julia might be pregnant. But she was too keyed up to hold such a depressing thought for long.

  ‘Wicked witch has gone,’ she called up the stairs. ‘Coast’s clear.’ And thinking two could play at that game, she set about washing up breakfast and last night’s supper. Then she loaded the washing machine since they had no clean underwear left, no clean anything in fact.

  When Giles rang back, while she and Pearce were eating bread and cheese for lunch (Dido was still upstairs in a strop), she had already talked Pearce excitedly through her discovery, showing him the hidden words on the manuscript and expounding her theory. The act of framing her ideas out loud had lent her conviction and for a moment, when Pearce held out the phone saying, ‘It’s him,’ she had quite forgotten asking Giles anything.

  ‘Hello, Giles.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine. Bolshie but perfectly all right. Any joy?’

  ‘What? Oh yes. I feel the lack of,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That’s what it means. Can mean.’

  He was flattered by her remembering his well-drilled schoolboy Latin, as she knew he would be.

  ‘I wasn’t sure at first,’ he said. ‘But I slipped over to the reference library in Morrab Road to check for you. Egeo from Egere. I lack or feel the lack of. But in some contexts, with the ablative or something, I’ve no Kennedy here, it can also mean I desire. That help you any?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thanks. That’s brilliant. Thanks,’ and she hung up before remembering to thank him for inviting them over for dinner the next night.

  ‘I feel the lack of Toby, even as I desire him,’ she said, returning to her place at the table where Pearce was peeling her an orange. ‘I love Rosy but I feel the lack of Toby, whom I desire.’

  ‘Do you?’ he asked. ‘Well that’s all right, then.’

  44

  The news that Eliza had a new man in her life was only startling for a moment. As soon as Giles recalled how different she had looked at the hospital and the equanimity with which she had faced him, it made perfect sense.

  Julia could not disguise the pleasure and relief the news had given her.

  Giles had assumed people exaggerated when they spoke of unsisterly closing of ranks that occurred among women who were hitched towards those who became suddenly single. Seeing the process in reverse, he revised his opinion.

  Having seen inside Eliza’s flat at last, he knew he should be happy for her to be starting afresh, returning to her Cornish roots, but could not help being anxious that her moving down here meant losing Dido.

  ‘Dido can still visit us,’ Julia said, reading his mind. ‘She can come for proper holidays. But I’m sure the schools here are much better than that place she’s stuck at in London. Th
e classes are bound to be smaller.’

  That night at dinner, Eliza looked still better than she had at the hospital. She was not in a state, after all, and she’d had time to prepare.

  The boyfriend was reassuringly not a beauty. He was, however, dauntingly male and by his mere handshake and lack of cologne made Giles feel effete and lightweight. Giles made the mistake of beginning their conversation with, ‘So, Julia says you’re a farmer,’ to which, with a hint of mockery, Pearce said, ‘Eliza says you sing higher than the average Cornishwoman,’ and the gulf between them was marked out with smoking beacons.

  Defensively Giles felt he must indulge in a little sabre rattling, with aggressive questions about foot and mouth, BSE and subsidies. Pearce proved disarmingly unaggressive in response, retaliating with quiet humour and an admission that British farming could not continue as it was and that most subsidies were probably unjustifiable.

  For all his rumbling voice and big frame, he had the gentleness of a man who knew his strength and Giles found himself imagining what it would be like to be a child on such a lap, held by strong arms and read stories in such a voice. And he felt jealousy, not that this man was sleeping with Eliza but that he would undoubtedly prove a more effective father to Dido than he had.

  The two other couples staying had both gone out to an afternoon wedding. This created the illusion – since the hotel was designed to feel like a private house – that Giles and Julia were entertaining in their own home and had mysteriously acquired a handful of servants and a cook. It was still light and the windows open on to the garden filled the sitting room with some rich scent. Lily, perhaps, or lilac. The sofas were old, deep and comfortable, one wall was lined with books one might actually want to read and the lamps shed a flattering light. A waitress brought them champagne and dishes of huge green olives. Glancing up at the tableau they made in the speckled looking glass, Giles saw this was the perfect place for them to meet; a civilised space where none of them belonged.

  There was an initial flurry about Dido. Where was she? With Pearce’s sister. How was she? Cross. Then a brief embarrassment followed when the woman who brought in their menus was recognised as an old schoolfriend of Pearce’s. Actually it was no embarrassment at all. Pearce greeted her, introduced her, asked after her children. To be embarrassed one had to be self-conscious and he seemed entirely lacking in that, merely calm, self-contained, faintly amused. Retreating, sabre lowered, Giles tried to despise him for wearing brushed denim jeans and great clomping, slightly orange boots which had probably come from the same farmer’s supply depot as the jeans, but found he could not because it was so obvious that a man who wore such things did not care and would be impervious to fashion criticism.

  When they were called down to the dining room, Pearce was drawn into conversation by Julia so, having handed round walnut bread, Giles turned to Eliza.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your Mum,’ he said. ‘I know you didn’t get on much but, well…she’ll leave a mum-shaped space, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thanks. She always liked you.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘You know she did. She thought I was insane to leave you.’

  This silenced him. What could he say. You were?

  ‘How’s yours?’ she asked.

  ‘Sober. Scary,’ he said. ‘You look well. Despite broken legs, dead mothers and no visible means of support.’

  ‘I feel well,’ she said and grinned.

  ‘So life is good,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said without even needing to look at Pearce. She smiled almost wildly and, fluent in the signs, he wondered if she’d had some Dutch courage before she set out. ‘In the most amazing and unexpected way, it does seem to be. I’ve almost finished the doctorate,’ she added.

  ‘Trevescan?’

  She nodded, giggled at the unlikelihood of this and began to tell him a long, involved story about a family Bible and an unpublished manuscript she was convinced she could prove to be in Trevescan’s own hand. While she talked, he found himself admiring her. He had not forgotten how pretty she was, but it had been so long since she was last deeply involved in her work that he had forgotten how enthusiasm lit her rather old-fashioned looks up from within so that she became almost beautiful. Her cleverness had always unsettled him – her conversation assumed a wealth of academic reference he lacked so that three-quarters of his responses were bluffs. At the same time it had always given him vicarious pride. He had loved it when she locked horns with some friend or colleague over dinner and became so involved she would forget to eat the food on her plate.

  ‘So what happens when you finish?’ he asked. ‘Will you go back to Oxford?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said and now she glanced over at Pearce, who had just topped up Julia’s glass too fast so that it slopped over. ‘Maybe just finishing it could be an end in itself. Maybe I’m too old for all that. I dunno.’

  He saw that perhaps the thing with Pearce was not so far advanced as Julia supposed.

  In his hours of wounded pride he had often entertained the fantasy that Eliza suffered terrible regrets, that when she left him for Paul Lessing and it had all gone wrong, she had been desperate to apologise and come back to him only to find the way barred by Julia. Looking at her now, he knew he could never believe that again. Whatever her fond delusions at the time, she had not left him for Paul. Paul had merely proved a means to an end. She knew that male vanity required the satisfaction of a rival, that he would never have accepted that she might simply have outgrown him. He could chat and smile at this new man in her life quite easily because she would be bound to outgrow him too. Seeing the grim little flat she had been content to call home, seeing her childhood house, he had wondered if marrying her had been a crazy error of judgement. Watching her now he saw that, on the contrary, he should be flattered she had ever been interested in him.

  He knew Julia had brought them all together because she imagined he pined after Eliza and thought if he could see her with another man he would be spited out of love with her. They should have met up like this years ago, if only so that he could see that, on the contrary, he was cured and could view Eliza and their past together without passion.

  Who was he trying to fool? Of course he wanted her. Seeing her curled up in a corner of the sofa, shoes kicked off, feet drawn under her in the gesture he remembered, hair golden in the lamplight, hearing her softly insistent voice again, only reminded him how painful her sudden betrayal had been. He remembered sharply how physically acute had been the ache left by a relationship he had tried to dismiss as largely a thing of the mind.

  ‘I’m going to see Dr Goldhammer again tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Can you believe it? After all this time? I never thought she’d agree to it.’

  And all his carefully erected defensive fictions came tumbling down in the warmth of her smile. His obsession with helping and protecting Dido was symbolic, nothing more, a gesture towards the daughter now that the mother was beyond his reach.

  Over coffee Julia was grilling Pearce about how he survived out here without theatre and opera and concerts. Giles turned to Eliza and was startled to find her looking at him with equal interrogative directness.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Sod all this. Julia. Pearce. The house. Everything. I love you. I’ve never stopped wanting you back. Just say the word and I’ll do anything, get rid of Julia, move back to Oxford, even move down here if that’s what you want. Anything!’

  But of course he said nothing of the sort. Because he was too cowardly. Because the big man in the orange boots was so obviously, incontestably, a Good Thing. Because Julia took that moment to look across at him with his mother’s hot, beseeching eyes.

  So no. He leant forward, as did Eliza, and said, with all the cautious warmth of a second proposal of marriage, ‘We’ve never discussed this, which is daft, but you know you can have a straightforward divorce whenever you like. I won’t put up a fight. You can split me down the middl
e.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said and actually grinned. ‘That’s so sweet. But I couldn’t afford a solicitor. Why? Do you and Julia want to…?’

  ‘Oh. No,’ he said a little vehemently. ‘I mean, probably not. I dunno. It’s all a bit meaningless really, when you already live together but, well…And there’s always Legal Aid. You know I wouldn’t want you to feel I was holding you back.’

  ‘I don’t, Giles.’

  ‘Good. Eliza?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I…I saw your flat. I had to check on you when the school asked about where Dido was and…Christ! I’m sorry. I had no idea. Look, if you divorced me and it was all sorted out properly and you’d have a settlement and…’ Where was this coming from? ‘even if we had to sell up or whatever. I worry about you. And Dido. And –’

  ‘Because I’m so poor?’

  ‘Partly. Think about it.’

  ‘I will. Okay?’

  45

  Julia’s idea in inviting Eliza and her new boyfriend to dinner at the hotel was ostensibly to clear the air of any awkwardness caused by Giles’ involvement in Dido’s accident. She justified it to herself by saying it marked the start of a new era in the life of the extended family in which, as part of a new, independent couple, Eliza could progress from the problematic role of errant and/or abandoned wife. Only now that the evening was not going according to plan could Julia admit to herself what her actual purpose had been. She was overjoyed that Eliza had found someone else, not for Eliza’s sake but for hers and Giles’. At last Eliza could be established as something other than a hapless victim and by seeing her happily involved elsewhere, Giles could at last be brought to let go of past mistakes and move on.

  Eliza had begun the evening appropriately enough, sitting by her former rival and drawing out Pearce to show him off when he was too modest to take his best advantage. But when they went down to dinner she neglected Pearce more and more to talk to Giles. Far from being embarrassed by this, Giles seemed not to notice and even encouraged her, asking her quiet, exclusive questions about music, murmuring things too low for Julia to hear or, when he did steer the conversation into more general territory, soon making it exclusive again by playing do-you-remember, indulging in reminiscences that meant little to her and even less to Pearce.