‘Can’t be the real thing. Not the William Rufus. Must be a copy.’
‘It’s real,’ the man said. ‘That’s the whole point. It’s him.’
‘Doesn’t seem possible.’
‘That’s the point,’ the man said again. ‘It is possible. It’s real history.’
The woman straightened up.
‘Can’t take it in.’ She moved away a little. ‘Coming for a coffee?’
‘In a minute. I’ll follow you. I’ll only be a minute.’
When she had gone, he leaned forward and laid a hand on the tomb. His eyes were closed. Then he opened them and saw Archie watching him. He smiled. And then he took his hand off William Rufus and put it in his pocket and went slowly out of the choir as if he were reluctant to leave it. As he went into the north aisle, he turned for a second and Archie raised his hand. For a moment, the man remained, looking back, and then he moved slowly away down the north aisle and Archie’s hand fell back into his lap.
What, he wondered, was he going to do? How had it come about that he, Archie Logan, liked and loved all his life, should now feel himself to be wandering alone in some darkling place? And, what was worse, a darkling place with no map. He had always had a map. He had always known, with a benign, unpushy certainty, where he was going; he had been conscious, ducking into Granny Mossop’s low doorway, that she was truly worth more to him than his father’s public glories ever could be. Even now, he knew he did not want those glories, and he knew that, at least, with an energy that was familiar to him.
But, despite that energy, he felt helpless. All around him, those people, those precious people, who had wheeled like planets round his central earth, seemed to have changed. His father, Liza, even Thomas – stoutly declaring on his Sunday visit that they must forget his wound-up telephone call from school – all seemed to him to have found maps of their own, maps that led them away from him and into territory where he was reluctant to follow. In Liza’s case, would she even allow him to follow wherever she was going? And, if she beckoned to him, could he come and be the led rather than the leader?
He slid forward until his knees were resting on the low carpeted bench in front of him. He was willing, he told himself, to be taught. He was willing to change. That was not the problem. What was the problem was the sense of being immobilized, as if the understanding of being alive, which had always come to him as naturally as breathing, had suddenly vanished. If he was his own patient, he thought, laying his head on his folded arms, he would tell himself that he was profoundly depressed. But he could not do that, somehow. What was there to depress him? Thomas was not being bullied. His father was, as he said, not removing himself, only adding to himself. Liza had every right to remind him that she was changing and developing; indeed, it shamed him to think she had had to point it out. She had also pointed out, and so had his father, that he was behaving like a child. Was that it? Was some childhood spectre of a lost mother and a thus doubly precious father stealing out of the past and his subconscious to haunt him now? Or was it just being about to be forty? Or was it both, everything?
In the choir stalls below him, a woman slipped into a pew and knelt and bent her head. She had brown hair, held back above her ears with combs, and a dark-blue overcoat whose folds crumpled softly over the pew behind her. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty. Was she, too, Archie wondered, down some cul-de-sac without any idea of how to turn round? Or perhaps her husband had run off with her best friend; or she had a child in hospital; or she had found another man and wanted to be comforted into feeling easy about it. She turned her face a little, towards the altar, and Archie could see that she was in her forties and that she looked quite composed. Perhaps she had just come in to say thank you. Archie reflected with some despair that he had much to be grateful for, but that he simply did not seem able to reach that gratitude. He knew it but he could not feel it. He could feel nothing except that he was trapped, and full of longing.
He stood up. Dim, respectful lights were being switched on down the aisles. The woman in the dark-blue coat rose from her knees, smoothed and shook herself into place and set off towards the west door with the air of a person with the right amount of purpose. William Rufus was sinking into shadows. Why, Archie said to himself, why am I not at peace?
Crossing the Close back to the hotel car-park, Archie was intercepted by his sister-in-law, Clare. She worked for the city archivist, a job she claimed any filing clerk could do. She was wearing a grey flannel skirt and a navy-blue blazer, and was carrying a shopping basket containing files and a tin of cat food.
She said, ‘Oh, Archie!’ in the breathless way she usually greeted people, and he kissed her and asked her how she was.
She said, ‘Oh, you know. Dusty and depressed.’
‘Don’t always be depressed, Clare.’
‘I know. It’s so boring for everyone, isn’t it? Have you got time for a cup of tea?’
‘Not really. I’ve been playing truant for lunch.’
She drooped.
‘Walk back to the car with me,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’ He took her basket. ‘You and the medieval records.’
‘Saxon, actually. It’s amazing how fascinating it ought to be and how boring it is.’
‘What would you like to do instead?’
He began to move away and she took a few quick steps to keep up with him
‘I think Liza’s life looks pretty good.’
‘I’m not sure she’d agree with you.’
‘Archie?’
‘Country doctor’s wife,’ Archie said a little wildly. ‘Village life. Three children. Local job. I suppose it must seem a bit confining sometimes.’
Clare said nothing. A small nausea of apprehension knotted her stomach. Did Archie know about Blaise O’Hanlon? Clare herself did not know from Liza, who had not even hinted at him, but from Blaise, in person. Blaise had turned up at her house one evening the previous week and told her, almost before introductions were over, that he must talk to her about Liza.
‘There’s nobody else, you see. And I must talk. I knew you existed because Liza told me, and I thought you would talk to me. I can’t talk to Liza because she is so adorably resolute, so please, please can I talk to you?’
He had stayed to supper. Whisking up a soufflé, Clare reflected that it was probably a year since she had cooked for a man, and it was absolutely typical that when she did it was for a man who was not in love with her, but with her sister. He ate ravenously and was full of praise.
‘Oh, this is so delicious. Are you sure there’s no more? Not even crumby little edge bits? Wouldn’t it be easy if you could be Liza?’
She believed in his love completely. She could not bring herself not to. But even Clare could see that for Liza Blaise was no match for Archie. To Clare, Liza and Archie had one of those rare relationships where mutual roots seemed tangled round each other.
She said to Blaise, ‘There isn’t any hope, you know.’
‘Then I’ll make there be some.’
‘You mustn’t be so destructive,’ Clare said, excited in spite of her better sense.
‘I only want to give,’ Blaise said, finishing the wine. ‘And I need her. Need is so different from want.’
Clare was alarmed.
‘What are you planning?’
‘Persuasion,’ he said. ‘A long, loving campaign of persuasion. I want to persuade her to see how different she is. She has no idea. She’s like the Sleeping Beauty.’
‘And is Archie the thorny hedge?’
‘Archie?’ Blaise said, briefly bemused. ‘What about Archie?’
‘She’s married to him. He’s her husband.’
Blaise looked directly at Clare.
‘He doesn’t see her as I see her.’
‘You don’t know that! You don’t know her at all!’
‘I do,’ Blaise said. ‘I knew her at once.’
‘Reverting to me,’ Clare said now to Archie. ‘Do you think I�
��m emotionally retarded because I always want what I can’t have? Or at least, I think I do.’
They had arrived in the car-park. Struggling to find the right key and to open the passenger door for Clare and to stow her basket on the confusion of the back seat gave Archie a few moments to wrestle with the memory of the jealous longing that had stricken him during lunch with his father.
When he at last answered Clare, he could say with some cheerfulness, ‘Heavens, no. It’s only another form of words for striving. If we all liked the status quo, think what a plodding life we’d lead. It’s—’ He paused, and then said with more seriousness, ‘It’s the – dissatisfaction and the hunger that keeps us exploring.’
He started the car and slid it out from the ranks of other cars into the narrow street leading away from the city centre.
Clare said, ‘I think that sounds very insecure.’
‘Of course it does. It is.’
‘Robin was like that. Always exploring. His wasn’t striving, it was just self-indulgence.’
Archie said, changing gear to swing steeply uphill towards the prison, ‘That’s another thing altogether. That’s a fear born of getting to know someone and realizing that they know you.’
‘I thought that was love,’ Clare said.
‘It is. At least, it’s part of love.’
‘Then—’
‘Clare,’ Archie said, fighting with conflicting messages from his head and his guts. ‘I don’t think I can quite cope with this topic at three-thirty on a Monday afternoon in heavy traffic.’
‘Sorry,’ Clare said at once. ‘Sorry.’ She pressed herself back into her seat. ‘I only ask you things because you look as if you know.’
Archie said with vehemence, ‘I know nothing.’
Clare lived in a narrow Victorian end-of-terrace house, which stood on the edge of a rough little green below the prison. A low wall and a square of paving divided it from the road in front, and a brick path led up to the door. Archie followed Clare, carrying her basket, and waited while she put the key into the lock and turned it and swung the door open to reveal a narrow hall and a narrower table bearing a letter rack and a china dish for keys and an arrangement of dried flowers.
Clare said, ‘Are you sure about tea?’
‘Quite sure. But thank you.’
‘Give my love to Liza.’
‘Of course.’
‘And thank you for the lift.’
He bent and kissed her cheek. She smelled of L’Air du Temps. Liza used to wear it once. Sweet, schoolgirl scent; the scent, Archie had once said teasingly to Liza, of tennis-club socials in Haslemere. Liza had never worn it since. Clare waited until Archie had walked down her path and closed her gate after him, and then she shut the door and walked along the hall to the kitchen which looked, dispiritingly, exactly as she knew it would, since she had been the last person in it.
Archie drove out of Winchester, endeavouring to fix his mind resolutely on nothing at all but the remainder of his professional day. What was to be gained by letting his mind slip back into that turbulence which seemed, all at once, to freeze him and to churn him up? Better by far to think of things he could affect than things he was powerless to affect. Better, but impossible. Impossible to keep his imagination and thoughts in check, just as it would be impossible to go home to Liza and say, Look, I don’t know what is the matter with me but it’s acute, and can you help? He had never said such a thing to Liza. He would feel, he told himself, that it was letting her down, to saddle her with his misery. What could she do, poor girl? We all survive, he told himself, on a mixture of self-knowledge and self-image, a balancing act of how things are and how we wish they were. But what, oh what, Archie thought, gripping the wheel, is it that I am so ardently wishing for?
He drove the car into the health centre car-park and brought it efficiently to rest in the rectangle marked out by painted lines and ‘Dr Logan’ lettered neatly on the tarmac. There was an hour before surgery, an hour with his dictating machine and then letters to consultants about ruptured Achilles tendons and chronic back pain, malfunctioning livers and nasal washes. He spread his hands out across the steering wheel. They might, at that moment, have been the hands of a stranger. Could it be . . . ?
Someone tapped on the driver’s window. The pharmacist was mouthing through the glass at him. He wound the window down.
‘Dr Logan. Thank goodness you’ve come. There’s no doctor here, they are all out on call, and Mr Barrett has just been brought in by his daughter. Why she did not take him to hospital I can’t imagine. It looks to me like a heart attack. Could you—’
Archie seized his bag from the back seat and flung the door open, almost knocking her over.
‘Coming,’ he said. ‘Coming.’
Blessed emergency, blessed Mr Barrett. Leaving the car door swinging wide, Archie leaped out and ran. The pharmacist closed it behind him gently, and then leaned against it for a moment, and dreamed.
‘Thing,’ Imogen said commandingly.
She lay on her tummy in the bath in a flotilla of plastic boats and dolls.
‘Look,’ Liza said, kneeling by the bath with a soapy sponge. ‘I’ve been singing to you for hours.’
Imogen rolled over and lay luxuriously on one elbow.
‘Daddy come. Daddy thing.’
‘Daddy is doing surgery.’
‘Thally thing.’
‘Sally has gone home with a headache. I expect you gave her a headache by screaming.’
Imogen considered this. She had screamed at teatime when Liza’s appearance from school had put paid to her plan of playing with the telephone while Sally was occupied with the ironing. Once, she had randomly dialled a number and a woman had answered, so now she dialled and dialled, when she thought no-one was noticing, and whispered fiercely, ‘Hello, lady, hello, lady, hello, lady,’ into the receiver. She loved it.
‘Not headache,’ Imogen said defiantly, rolling over again.
Liza gazed at her perfect little bottom.
‘You are an awful child, Imogen.’
‘Mummy thing.’
Liza got up from her knees.
‘No. No more singing.’
In her skirt pocket lay a letter from Blaise. She had not opened it. Half of her thought she would throw it away unopened; a quarter of her thought she would read it the moment Imogen and Mikey were safely in bed, and the last quarter of her thought she would simply carry it about, unread, like a little phial of magic whose potency vanishes when opened.
Mikey, undressed down to his socks, appeared in the doorway.
‘Daddy’s come.’
‘He’s doing surgery. He won’t be back for hours.’
‘I am back,’ Archie said. ‘It wasn’t my night. I forgot.’
He stooped to kiss her, and then lower for Imogen, dipping his tie in the bath water.
‘Thing,’ Imogen said.
‘Thing yourself,’ Archie said, and picked up Mikey. ‘If you’re going to be a success with the girls, M. Logan, you must always take your socks off first, not last.’
‘Why?’
‘So as not to look ludicrous. Don’t fiddle with your willy.’
Mikey lay back against his father’s shoulder, and closed his eyes.
‘Willy likes it.’
‘How was lunch?’ Liza said.
‘It was what I thought it would be. He is getting married.’
‘Who?’ Mikey said.
‘Grandpa.’
Imogen stood up in the bath and flapped her arms for attention.
‘Out, out, out, out, out—’
‘So?’ Liza said.
Archie looked at her.
‘Out!’ shouted Imogen.
Liza stooped to lift her out into a bath towel.
Archie said to her back, ‘He was very affectionate.’
‘Of course he was,’ Liza said, towelling.
Archie peeled off Mikey’s socks and lowered him into the bath.
‘It’s cold,’ Mikey s
aid. ‘I don’t want this doll thing. Or this.’ He began to throw toys out of the bath.
‘Stop it!’ Liza said.
A purple plastic hippopotamus hit Imogen’s leg and fell on to Liza’s foot.
‘Ow!’ Imogen shrieked. ‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’
‘Shut up. It didn’t hurt. If your father was affectionate, why are you looking like that?’
‘Ow,’ Imogen sobbed, clutching her leg theatrically.
‘Like what?’
‘Gloomy.’
‘And,’ Mikey said, ‘I don’t want this stupid crocodile.’ He picked it up and hurled it over his shoulder. It struck Archie in the groin.
‘There’s no point,’ Archie said. ‘There’s just no point.’
He stooped over the bath and gripped Mikey’s arm.
‘Stop that at once.’
Imogen bounced upright on Liza’s knee and made the letter in her pocket crackle faintly.
‘No point in what?’
‘Trying to talk to you. Trying to explain.’
Liza began to pull Imogen’s nightie over her head.
‘Bath time isn’t the perfect moment, certainly—’
‘Not pink one!’ Imogen shouted from inside the folds of brushed cotton. ‘Not pink! Not pink!’
Archie, heedless of his sodden tie and his jacket cuffs, began to soap his son. I’m lonely, he wanted to say to Liza. I’m lonely and I’m ashamed of it. Come back, Liza. Come back where I can reach you.
Mikey squealed.
‘Don’t tickle!’
‘I have to. Your feet are so disgusting. Why do you have such disgusting feet?’
‘They are sweet feet,’ Mikey said stoutly.
‘Now they are. They weren’t two minutes ago.’ He turned to look over his shoulder. ‘Liza?’
She was buttoning the last of the buttons up Imogen’s back. The nightie, to Imogen’s disappointment, was blue.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello.’
She smiled at him. It was a kind smile but not a loving, surrendering smile.
‘Hello.’
‘Forget it,’ Archie said. ‘I’m being an ass. Just forget it. I won’t mention it again.’
‘I do understand,’ Liza said, standing up with Imogen in her arms. ‘It’s just the difference between mountains and molehills. That you have to see, I mean.’
A Passionate Man Page 11
