by Morag Joss
Halfway down the bottle he thought he might one day be able to go outdoors again, and around the time he was finishing it off he felt able to go over the conversation with Matthew Sawyer once more in his mind, trawling every word and nuance for a shrimp’s worth of hope that he had not, with each syllable, shown himself to be a world-class, award-winning, twenty-two-carat, pompous fool. He was disappointed.
‘Ah, well now, if you’re the director, you’re just the fellow I need. I’d like a word,’ he had said, in the chap-to-chap tone that usually worked when he was extracting a favour from one of his junior teachers. The Sawyer guy had looked a bit surprised. Not as surprised as he would be when Derek got the job and introduced himself as the new boss, ha! But he had not got the job quite in the bag yet, and he had felt it wise to acknowledge that he had rather turned up out of the blue.
‘Is this a good moment?’ He had slipped easily into his habitual talking-people-round voice. ‘May I have just a minute or two of your time? I’d love to know’ – he remembered dropping the volume confidentially at this point – ‘how things are going, generally. Running a museum, not easy, I’m sure. I’m in education myself,’ he added, lest Sawyer think he was just some weirdo off the street, ‘so I know.’
Sawyer had smiled wanly. ‘Oh, indeed, yes. Difficult times, all round. Although I’m an architectural historian actually, by background. So, you’re bringing a party. Education is a large part of my remit, of course. Terribly keen on school visits. Have you contacted one of my education officers?’
It had been Derek’s turn to smile. ‘Perhaps I haven’t been clear. I’m not bringing a party. Of course my head of history might – she’s quite an energetic girl – but so much depends on our parents. We’re talking south Bristol here.’
He had sighed the sigh of the misunderstood and undervalued education professional, Blunketted, bloodied, bowed but unbeaten. ‘No, you see, my interest is more, well, strategic, in a sense. I’m interested in the general policy direction. Staff structures. Management style. Resources. Get me? How’s the funding? Got a lottery bid in?’
The effect of this had seemed to ruffle the guy a little. Good.
‘May I know your particular reason for asking?’ Sawyer had asked, rather haughtily.
The pompous little creep was actually talking down to him, coming over all ‘I’m an architectural historian and who the hell are you?’ It was in his voice and Derek could see it in the supercilious lift of his upper lip. He had felt a surge of rage. The guy was only running a bloody museum, for God’s sake. Who the hell cared, in the end, what happened to a few bloody artefacts? Of course they were important, but they were a damn sight less important than schools, which had real people in them, people like the hopeless sods that he had been trying thanklessly for ten years to do something for. His school was a damn sight more important than any bloody heap of relics, and running it was a bloody demanding job, a proper job, a job and a half, these days. But he must not say that. He would not say that. He had to keep his temper, but he would put this architectural snotty historian bastard in his place. Yes, he would keep his temper. He had even smiled.
‘Look, I’m quite happy to be straight with you. Yes, I do actually have a very particular reason for asking, since you ask. Perhaps I am being a little premature, but there is a very strong possibility that I will soon be in a position to bring considerable influence to bear upon developments here.’
He had paused while Sawyer had merely raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’
Derek, feeling forced to continue, had leaned forward. ‘Look, it’s probably better to be straightforward from the start. Better in the end. You see, it might interest you to know that I have in fact been shortlisted for the job of Director of Education and Cultural Services.’
Sawyer’s face had not changed in the short pause before he replied, ‘Oh, really? Well, as a matter of fact, so have I.’
Alone in the half dark of Cecily’s sitting room Derek sucked a mouthful of red wine through his teeth, moaning, and forced himself to relive his humiliation to its end. At that point Sawyer, still talking, had made a half turn and begun to lead him by the elbow back along the corridor towards the entrance.
‘Yes, most interesting. What fun. Ah, the machinations.’
Back in the vestibule he had turned to Derek and raised his voice in a pitying drawl. ‘You see, Mr...er...my dear chap, there’s always a makeweight candidate or two for these education jobs. You know, some bright deputy head from somewhere ghastly, the inner city or the Midlands or somewhere. Unappointable, of course. Wheeled in to keep the councillors happy – education committee’s always chocka with self-made bores. Wide field, national advertising, equal opportunities, can’t be seen to plump for the Oxbridge fella straight off. But in the end’ – Derek had noticed at this point that the woman in the kiosk had been joined by two others and that all three heads were staring gravely through the window – ‘in the end they’ll get someone who can speak the language, get on with the right people. Hearts and minds, d’you see? In a place like Bath? A social role. Calls for a certain...background. Got to be someone on the up. Fast track, do you follow? No job for a rough diamond. Or someone ten years off retirement. Wouldn’t get your hopes up, old man.’
Then, as he had moved towards the wide front door and pulled it open, Matthew Sawyer had brayed with a hideous sound that could have been a laugh or a seizure. To Derek’s disappointment, it had been a laugh.
‘And the museum is closed. Cruel old world – dear me, yes. Well, cheerio!’
Derek drank the last of the plonk and burned with inarticulate fury towards the man and all that he stood for, socially, politically, professionally and, most of all – oh, very much most of all – personally. Hatred was making his palms sting. It rose up his arms and across his shoulders, warmed his huge torso, made his buttocks prickle and coursed down his big legs. All through his body his blood was beating like a ticking bomb. To lose this job, this one job, his only chance, to lose it at all, but to lose it to that – to that – But before he could decide what, he almost drowned in a wave of heartburn.
Knowing that such rage was bad for him, he turned his mind to his erstwhile comforter, Cecily, and found no comfort. If anything, the recollection of what had then happened made him angrier still: Cecily following him out onto the pavement and pretending that she was more interested in that dieting rubbish than in their evening. She had insisted on staying, which would mean him coming all the way out again in a couple of hours to fetch her, and them eating so late that he would probably be too full for their usual, unless he could persuade her to get on top. He stopped short of admitting to himself that that was mainly what he was here for. She was spoiling their evening and was behaving as if he were. His anger subsided into an impotent fatigue. He was tired of the whole thing. It had been a knackering week, all round.
He yawned, but he could not allow himself to relax completely yet. He had brought in his shopping but he was still in his suit and would not be able to change until he brought in the rest of his stuff from the back of the car. He had, as usual, parked it quite a way up the street, which was more discreet but also much less convenient. Also, he reflected, fairly pointless, since Cecily’s neighbours must have seen him dozens of times using a key to let himself in. It was just as well she lived in Bath where nobody knew him. He could even go out in public with her here, not that they ever did much, a thing he would never have risked in Bristol. He would get his stuff in a minute. He would get started in the kitchen in a minute. He finished the dregs in his glass, lay back and closed his eyes. Just for a minute. But before the minute was up his mouth fell open, his hand relaxed, and the wineglass, tumbling gently off his stomach, landed softly beside him on the sofa.
THEY PLAYED the programme and followed it with two encores, a short Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis and the almost compulsory Swan by Saint-Saëns. Sara was taken aback by the length and warmth of the applause, which she knew to be both sincere and
undeserved, and took her seat at dinner gratefully. James was placed on the other side of the table, and apart from an exchange of platform smiles at the end of the performance there had been no other communication between them. She guessed he would say she had been ‘fine’, and in some respects she had been: her fingering agile and virtuosic, bowing fluid and assured, phrasing intelligently musical and her tone sweetly powerful. The man on her left, attacking his tartlet of mushrooms with hollandaise sauce, was telling her so, while she managed to shake her head, nod, smile and eat without really listening. Her mind wandered back to the summer school at Tangle-wood in 1974 when she, a nervous wee ‘promising’ young cellist from Glasgow, aged thirteen, was giddily soaking up the experience of a master class with the legendary Piatigorsky, who had said: ‘What really matters is how you will use your art as a human being in a productive life. Everything hangs together. You cannot be a stupid person and a great player; you cannot be a mentally unhealthy person and produce something of value in our difficult profession.’
At least she was not a stupid person, she thought afterwards as she made her way across Kings Parade in the dark, although it was verging on the mentally unhealthy not to have waited for the rain to ease off. It was pouring, and as she dodged the puddles, laden with cello, bag with shoes and petticoat, and her velvet dress on a hanger in a zipped cover, she regretted not leaving even earlier. She was going to be soaked just getting to the car in Manvers Street. She had left James lugubriously nursing a bottle of claret. ‘Oh, come on, have another glass of wine. Life is a cabaret, old chum,’ he’d said. It was only ten thirty and it was selfish of her, she knew, but she had had to flee from the prospect of a morose eulogy from James about Graham. Half an hour ago when Olivia had come over to her table to say good-bye it had been quite dry, so even though she was walking, lucky old Olivia would have missed the rain.
When she had reached Medlar Cottage, bolted through the rain to the house and changed into her bathrobe, she brought the velvet dress out of its bag and noticed at once that its broad silk belt was missing. She was sure she had not dropped it, and realised crossly that she would have to go back to the Pump Room for it in the morning. But she would treat this as an exercise in good grace; she would get up early, miss the worst of the traffic and turn the necessity of going into Bath on a Saturday in summer to advantage. James was coming to supper and she would go to the fish market and the Fine Cheese Company and get something special. She would make a little occasion of it as a way of thanking him for this evening and for trying to get her going again. It was not his fault that she did not feel any further forward. And tomorrow might even be a nice day, she thought, switching off her bedside light at midnight and, in the dark of her room, enjoying for a moment the silence that followed the stopping of the rain.
CHAPTER 3
ON SATURDAY WHEN Sara got up just after seven o’clock the day was bright, although clouds were gathering in the west over Wing-o’-the-Hill. She left the cottage when the morning shadows were still long and walked into the aftermath of a botanic bloodbath. It had rained again in the night, and at dawn an unseasonable wind had swept through the valley, striking the massive crimson heads of all the late peonies in the garden with the swiftness of a cat’s paw. Their petals lay across the paths like scattered feathers. Sara made her way up the garden, kicking the flurries of petals, inflicting upon herself the pain of a closer inspection. Almost every one had been wrecked. The blossoms would only have had another week or so to go anyway, but the knowledge did not lessen her sense of violation.
She cruised into town in ten minutes, left the car in Manvers Street and was at the doors of the Roman Baths on the dot of nine o’clock, just as George, the chief security attendant, was unlocking them. He grinned at her.
‘Whoah, glutton for punishment, you are. Can’t you get enough? Last out, first in, I don’t know. What’s your problem?’
Sara pretended offence, a necessary part of the game she had to play with George, as she explained her errand. She had met George several times in the course of rehearsing last night’s programme, since the Pump Room acoustics were atrociously difficult and James arranged a couple of sessions after hours, during which they had been able to work at getting a good balance. George had been asked to listen and report back from different points in the room, and in his new role as sound advisor he had become outspoken and pally to the point of banter.
‘Leaving all your clothes behind, is it? I see. I ’spect it’ll be in the office, then, but it’s locked on Saturdays. Yes, I’ve got the key. Look, I was on till late last night and I’m a little bit behind this morning. Can you give me ten minutes till I’ve opened up below?’
‘Sure,’ Sara said. ‘You go on. Don’t hurry. I wouldn’t mind a wander round anyway. I’ll come and find you a bit later, shall I?’
George strode on ahead of her, unlocking doors, switching on lights and whistling good-naturedly as if (as it effectively was out of hours) the Roman Baths were all his, but that he did not mind a bit letting other people have a look-see. Sara hung back until, the whistling fainter and George out of sight, she had the place almost to herself. Three Japanese girls with backpacks lingered happily on the terrace above the Great Bath to take endless photographs of one another beside the life-sized stone statues. Sara hung over the stone balustrade, marvelling at the steamy green pool beneath, and then strolled on into the half dark of the museum below. As she descended closer to the spring, the warm, humid air rose around her. She felt none of the cynical unease that she had felt round the Great Bath the night before. It was good to be in town so early. She might have coffee afterwards in the Pump Room and she would stay in town a little longer to do her shopping. She might go off for a run when she got home, just a couple of miles, or she might go out to Fortune Park for a workout and swim instead. She made her way through the museum, enjoying a desultory reading of the earnestly informative wallboards.
She came to the part devoted to burials and stood looking down over a row of rough stone coffins whose engraved lids had become the biographies of long-dead people’s lives. The carved stones told the stories of lost soldiers, mourned wives and the slave’s little baby, who was ‘freed’ by its adoption into a Roman family. Had the young slave mother died? Or had the child simply been taken from her, becoming the property of the childless couple who owned the mother? Perhaps she, poor thing, had given up her baby in order to secure its freedom. Perhaps the child had been fathered by the Roman master. There was no way of knowing from the coffin lids which had so long ago closed over these people, and how little it mattered anyway. The baby had died before its second birthday. The suffering of these dead was over and now two thousand years had passed to quiet the bereaved. In all that time the sacred spring, never ceasing, had poured forth how many gallons?
She looked round mildly, hearing as if for the first time the background rush of water. She allowed herself to be drawn away from the coffins towards the source of the noise. It was coming from the Sacred Spring overflow which gushed straight out of the wall about twelve feet away, at the end of a wide tunnel-like corridor. Sara stopped and looked down its darkness to the light at the end. The corridor led to a railing just in front of the overflow, which formed the only barrier between the spectator and the thousands of gallons of hot water that daily poured out of the wall. Under the spell of the sound, she walked towards the railing as the rush of water tumbled out at eye level and fell vertically for five feet before hitting rock below. She could see how the water slid in a deep, rusty sheet towards her and disappeared through a rough grille at a point directly below her feet. From the railing’s edge she could almost, by leaning over the railing, have placed her hand in the hot powerful flow of water, if she were stupid in that kind of way; it would be easy to overbalance and tumble onto the rocks. This overflow arrangement, an arched brick hole in the wall, fed the water into the drain which carried it beneath the floor back to the main drain and eventually out to the river. The Romans coul
d surely not have imagined that it would still be working, and people still marvelling at its brilliance, two thousand years after they built it.
The gauzy steam rising all around had basted every contour of the surrounding wall with mineral-heavy droplets, laying down particle by particle a bronzy, gingery crust round the brick mouth from which the water exploded, apparently stained with gold, as if from a bottomless reservoir of riches. Hidden spotlights played on the tumbling flood as it burst forth and bathed it with the luminosity of a miracle. Sara approached it cautiously, as she would an altar. Arresting as the sight was, the crash of water upon her ears was yet more stupefying. Breathing and tasting became the same thing in the roaring, tin-edged air. Sara felt the grip of dampness underfoot as she went on, silent and staring. She reached the rail. Then. Looking down. And the rush of the water almost drowned the scream, but in the orange light her head jerked up suddenly and she turned away. The water flowed on. But she had to turn back. Her eyes travelled down again into the wet glistening pool below, where the body lay. It was so large and so dark in that small, bright space, in all that flowing, tumbling water. Those legs and arms, they were going all the wrong way; spider limbs: it was a huge, drenched, dead spider. She tried not to look again at the face. The water flowed on. She looked again at the poor, stiff, dead face with its mouth open and soundless, while the water ran over it and over it like clear, flowing glass. It was all wrong, that face, which yesterday she had thought was Matteo’s. Matteo’s poor, dead, empty face. Move him. We must get him out of there. We must stop that face looking like that. Sara staggered away from the railing, and as her hands went up to cover her eyes, a hurrying, dark shape loomed at her out of the dark and enveloped her, as she stumbled, in its arms.
