The Optimists

by Andrew Miller

  ‘I suppose they have telephones there?’

  ‘There’s one.’

  ‘Are they allowed a weekend off?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘For a wedding.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Well, I would hope so,’ said Laura, making a face. ‘It’s not as if we have them all the time.’

  When they had finished their tea they poured the dregs on to the ground. Laura clutched at her stick and rocked herself to her feet. She said she would see Clem and Clare at supper. Seven o’clock? They would have a nice supper, a bottle of wine, a good chat. Kenneth carried the bag with the Thermos and cups. Clem shook his cousin’s hand and thanked him for his help. He walked with them to the front door and watched them down the path, then took a deep breath and went back to the garden. ‘Like a tour?’ he asked. There was a pause, a count of three, then she followed him inside.

  ‘The living room,’ he said, seeing suddenly how dis-piritingly bare it was. She looked at the carpet, the black mouth of the fire. He showed her the kitchen, a little oblong annexe at the back of the house. ‘The hobs work,’ he said, ‘though I’m not sure I’d want to try the oven.’

  Upstairs they went from the small bedroom to the large, then back to the small, where the wallpaper, sun-bleached, had a pattern of little biplanes piloted by blond boys through blue clouds. Other than the bed-frame the only furniture was a pine chest of drawers, painted white. ‘You prefer this one?’ he asked.

  Clare went to the wide open window. The view was south across the garden, the fields at the end of the garden, a line of woodland, the Mendip Hills, tawny after so much dry weather.

  ‘There was a woman at Ithaca,’ she said. ‘Mary Randall.’

  Clem waited for the story to go on. When it didn’t, he asked if Mary had been a friend of hers.

  ‘She ran away,’ said Clare. ‘And tried to swim to Denmark.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard the fat cook say it. It was a code they used.’

  ‘For running away?’

  ‘For drowning.’

  ‘Jesus, Clare.’

  ‘If I opened my window on a windy night I could hear the sea.’

  ‘Well, you won’t hear it here.’

  ‘The grass is like a sea.’

  ‘But it’s not a sea.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, turning to him. ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘I like the sea. So did Mary.’

  ‘Clare?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you choosing this room?’

  ‘The light must stay on. And the light on the landing. And in the bathroom.’

  ‘They’ll all be on.’

  ‘This is awful,’ she said.

  ‘We can give it up,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want.’

  She shook her head and turned back to the window. ‘What I want,’ she said, ‘is to believe there’s something at the end of this. Something better.’

  ‘You don’t believe that yet?’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Then I’ll believe it for you,’ he said. ‘Until you’re ready.’

  At seven, Clem carrying a bunch of yellow roses from the garden, they walked together up the lane. Clare held his arm. He said she would see a lot better if she removed her glasses; she didn’t answer him. Above their heads on either side the birds rustled and called from the trees. By seven thirty it would be dark. A month ago it was light until nine.

  Laura’s dog, a big blunt-headed retriever, was waiting for them on the drive. It barked once and shambled towards them, whipping its tail. Clem pressed the sleek hair on its skull. The porch lamp was on, and they followed the dog into the house and along a panelled corridor where the wood was almost black with age. The house dated from the 1700s; a home of some sort had stood on the site since the days of the Conqueror.

  Laura and Kenneth were in the kitchen.

  ‘Here they are!’ cried Laura. ‘And what blissful roses! Poor Alan’s, I suppose.’

  The kitchen smelt of fish pie, the radio was on; the dog circled itself in the corner and lay down on a rug, instantly asleep.

  Clem and Clare sat on a bench at the kitchen table. Laura poured white wine for them—a large glass for Clem, a smaller one for Clare. On the wall beside the kitchen door were the lines and dates (he could make out only one: June ’65) that Ron had marked with his coloured pens to make a record of the children’s heights. All comic gravitas, he had had them stand in turn, backs to the wall, while he levelled a pen along their skulls, drew the line and measured from the floor with one of Laura’s dressmaking tapes. Clem tapped Clare’s wrist. He pointed to the highest of the lines, marked in red like the flood line on the side of a bridge. ‘That’s you,’ he said. ‘The tallest of all.’

  Kenneth carried the pie to the table. Clem finished the wine. Laura fetched another bottle from the fridge. The Harwoods had always been generous with their drink. Wine, brandy; in Ron’s day a great deal of Bombay gin. It had not been like that in Bristol. There, a little beer at Sunday lunchtime, whisky in single fingers when there was something to celebrate. The Glass family had lived beneath their means somewhere in the middle of the lower middle class, the lower middle being as far down the social maypole as Nora, a lawyer married to an engineer, could possibly impel them. This was politics. The Harwoods, whose season of good money had not, Clem reckoned, lasted more than ten years, probably less, chose differently and lived like minor gentry. In his first year at secondary school, Clem had learned about plebeians and patricians in Ancient Rome. The Harwoods, clearly, were patricians, distinguished not so much by holidays in Corfu or Ron’s charcoal Mercedes, as by that freedom in their manner that seemed to come from not really caring about anything, the things other people cared about, that Nora cared about. In Bristol, everything was weighed, everything—homework, bedtimes, pocket money—a matter of principle. Behind life was a web of moral science. A certain seriousness was taken for granted. Blinder each week, Nora lectured them on clarity, the unillusioned eye, the hard edge that thinking needed if thinking was to serve. The Harwoods had garden parties and drove to Cheltenham for the races. Blatant atheists, they went twice a year to the abbey for elaborate rites involving censers and ash. They smoked at the table, went to bed in the middle of the afternoon if it suited them. They were Tories, of course, something Nora must have felt shamed by—her sister in with the landlords, the toffs, the bosses. If one of the dogs farted they roared with laughter.

  Odd, though, how two sisters should have gone their separate ways like that, and not only in their politics, their ambitions, their ideas on what constituted the good life, but physically too. As little girls—there was a photograph Clem knew well, the pair of them on a railway platform, 1940-something, pigtails and gasmask cases—they had been as alike as two drops of water. But Nora in middle age had shrunk into herself as though settling on to the perch of her own bones, a woman stripped for action who, had she lived, would, he thought, have become even leaner, tougher, her atoms packed as tightly as a sharping stone’s. Laura, the more luxurious, more sexual character (the stories about boyfriends, May balls, tiptoeing on the stairs at three in the morning, were all hers), had filled out, expanding almost exotically, so that now, to watch her cross a room was like watching one woman drag another with her in her arms. There were half a dozen pill bottles on the shelf above the kitchen sink. Like her house in the lane she was starting to buckle into the ground. Who would come for her in a crisis? Would Kenneth have the sense to sound the alarm? The strength to lift her?

  The pie was made with white fish, peas and boiled eggs, a crust of mashed potatoes on top. Laura called it nursery food. They ate; Clare was gently encouraged. Clem could not look at her face. He kept his eyes on his plate, topped up his wine, talked to Laura about the work he and Kenneth had done at the cottage, taking refuge in the homely details of water-heaters, light-fittings, the state of the chimney flue. For pudding there was cold stewed rhubarb. C
lare stood up from the table and left the room. Clem counted five minutes on the kitchen clock, then said he would look for her. Laura said that she would go. Clem shook his head. ‘I’d better get used to this,’ he said.

  She was in the drawing room staring at the television, though the set was off. He offered to switch it on for her. ‘Forget it,’ she said, as though he had broken a promise and would now be made to pay. She went to the sofa and lay with her face to its back. Clem sat in one of the armchairs, a big chair of tobacco-coloured leather that exhaled wearily under his weight. Through the wool of Clare’s cardigan he could see her vertebrae, four, five—the knuckles of her spine—and for a moment he had the urge to put his hand between her shoulders and touch her like a faith healer. There was a story he had read at university, a little book, not part of any course he was doing, about a young conquistador wrecked off the South American coast, a man who, losing everything—his country, his comrades, his place in life—discovered in himself, as though remembering what had always been there but had been forgotten, a power to heal. Reading it at nineteen Clem had thought of it as a Christian story: the young Spaniard knelt and prayed before he did his work. Now he thought it was a story about how strong a person could become when enough had been lost. He, Clem Glass, had lost things—illusions, a persisting innocence, much courage—but not enough to be effective. Odette Semugeshi, if she survived her wounds, would be qualified. Hard to think how you could lose more than she had lost (all of childhood hewn out of her head); how you could be stripped barer than she had been. With the wine in his blood it was not such a difficult task to conjure the girl into the room, to tempt her over (she pauses by the door: the modesty of power) and have her push small brown hands against his sister’s back until the thing was shifted. But this was nonsense. Clare would not be cured by a touch, whoever’s. Time, medication, good luck, those might work. He was becoming as credulous as the old men on the island.

  ‘It’s got quite chilly,’ said Laura, when she came in. ‘Shall we have a fire?’

  She lifted away the hinged brass fender. Clem crouched on the hearth-rug, balled sheets of newspaper, made a pyramid of kindling, and snapped a flame from his lighter. When the wood took he laid on one of the previous winter’s logs, then went outside to the store and carried back an armful of timber and cobwebs.

  ‘The first since April,’ said Laura. ‘We’d better have something to celebrate it.’ She limped to the drinks tray and poured two brandies from a heavy decanter. This should see us out,’ she said. The fire popped and snapped, smoked a little, then drew well. Clem yawned, rubbed at his neck, gazed round at walls almost completely unchanged since he had sat in the room as a boy. The last of the last good things were in here: antiques, objets, ‘art’, bought with Ron’s money before the money went wherever it went. A walnut escritoire, the black lacquered vases, the Victorian watercolours with their lot numbers still taped to their backs. Would they be sold off? A vase to pay for the wedding reception. A View of the Hunt on the Marlborough Downs to cover a private hip replacement. He had realised last night that the drawing room was one of three or four rooms that Laura and Kenneth still used—the drawing room, the kitchen, a couple of rooms upstairs. Lives in slow retreat, each year shutting another door whose handle they would not turn again.

  Clare turned over on the sofa. ‘Hello, dear,’ said Laura. ‘Were you having a lovely snooze?’ Clem saw the flames shimmering in his sister’s glasses. He drank half his brandy, then walked behind the sofa, making a quick telephoning gesture to Laura as he left the room. There was a phone beside the front door. He had the number for Theophilus House in the breast pocket of his shirt. The ring-tone was the sound of two little silver bells, something quaintly mechanical in a wooden box. Who answered? The guest-master? The voice said how nice it was to hear him again. ‘Likewise,’ said Clem. The phone was laid on the office desk. Two minutes later, his father came on, slightly winded.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Clem?’

  ‘You were in the middle of something?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait. How are things with you?’

  Clem said where he was, that he was there with Clare and that they were going to stay a while in the cottage in the lane.

  ‘Won’t you stay in Laura’s house? Goodness knows, it’s big enough.’

  ‘We’re only two minutes away,’ said Clem. ‘We can be more independent.’

  ‘Laura wouldn’t mind what you did.’

  ‘Laura’s getting on, Dad.’

  ‘She’s a year younger than me.’

  ‘She’s not as robust as you.’

  ‘Isn’t she? I hadn’t thought of that. How is Clare?’

  ‘There’s a long way to go still.’

  ‘Should I be down there?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘No. Of course.’

  ‘She’s not ready for much. Everything’s a strain.’

  ‘You’re the man on the ground, Clem. You guide me.’

  ‘In a few weeks, perhaps. Who knows?’

  ‘Then let’s hope for that.’

  Clem told his father about the wedding.

  ‘Frankie! Now that is a surprise.’

  ‘I think Laura thinks so too.’

  ‘A family wedding. Well, well. A first for your generation.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘A vote for the future.’

  Clem laughed. A second later his father joined him, though perhaps neither could have said what exactly had amused them.

  ‘We’ll play it by ear,’ said his father.

  ‘Yes,’ said Clem. ‘I’ll call you next week.’

  ‘You’ll thank Laura for me, won’t you?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And give Clare my love. If the right moment presents itself.’

  In the drawing room Laura had moved on to the sofa. Clare’s head lay pillowed on one of her thighs.

  ‘Asleep,’ whispered Laura, smoothing Clare’s hair. ‘I’ll sit up with her for a while.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She’s exhausted. Absolutely exhausted. I can remember a time a few months after Kenneth was born when I thought if I got any more tired I’d collapse and die. I mean literally. She needs copious rest.’

  Clem picked up his brandy and went to the fire.

  ‘You should sleep too,’ she said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what’s in your head, Clement Glass.’

  He grinned at her, and for an instant saw in her face, in her even brown gaze, his mother, sight restored, looking up at him. A look that said, ‘Where now, struggler?’

  He swallowed the brandy. ‘Dad wanted to thank you,’ he said.

  Laura nodded.

  17

  He stayed in Frankie’s old room, woke early and went down to the kitchen. Kenneth was there, standing at the window. He had misbuttoned his shirt, and his shoelace—why could he not have slip-ons?—hung loose. Clem tied them for him, rebuttoned the shirt, then found them both some breakfast. The dog waited expectantly by the side of the table. Clem shared his toast with it. He asked Kenneth if he had seen Laura or Clare. Kenneth shook his head. They washed their plates and mugs and went upstairs. There were twin beds in the guest room at the lane end of the house (another two guest rooms at the ‘court’ end). They stripped the beds and carried the mattresses and eiderdowns outside. It had rained in the night and the grass was damp. They lifted the mattresses on to the roof of the car, securing them as best they could with lengths of green gardening twine. From the airing cupboard they brought down sheets and towels. On the back seat of the car Clem put his suitcase and the grey electric fire he had found in an unused dressing room. They drove to the cottage, each of them with an arm out of a window to cling to the mattresses. The dog ran after them and ran around their ankles as they unloaded, barking excitedly as they wrestled the mattresses up the stairs. The bed-frame in the child’s room was slightly too narrow, in the other room too broad, but they would serve well enough for the time t
hat they were needed. Clem made the beds. The sheets, shaken out, had a good smell, though it might have been many months since they were laundered and folded and put away. Back at Laura’s they began to load up again. She had shown Clem the pans he could take, and in which of the deep cupboards he would find a spare set of crockery (patterns of tangled leaves on the edges of the plates). He was pleased it was just Kenneth with him. They worked without any fuss, already used to each other. If the women were sleeping then let them sleep on; let Clare get her ‘copious’ rest—Laura too.

  The room on the ground floor at the court end was Ron’s old study. At first Clem thought the door was locked, but when he pushed harder it gave inwards with the dry snap of an air seal. The curtains were half drawn; on the shelves, the gilded book-spines—collected classics, more furniture than literature—glimmered dully. How strong the dead man’s presence was, as though at any moment a newspaper would crackle and a voice politely enquire what it was Clem wanted there. After seven years there seemed to linger still some trace of the cigarettes he had smoked, an aromatic tobacco with the print of an artillery piece on the front, a brand that Clem had never seen on sale anywhere and which he suspected was ordered privately by gentlemen smokers from a shop in Curzon Street. He opened the curtains. Across a flowerbed and a strip of lawn were the remains of the tennis court, its surface broken by powerful weeds that used the side-wiring as a climbing frame.

  The main desk was presidential, an utterly solid piece it would have needed four men to move, but by the door there was a smaller one with two hinged leaves and two drawers. Kenneth and the dog were in the corridor, waiting there like a pair of primitives outside a cave where once a local god had lived. Had either been in the study at all since Ron had died? He waved them in; they came reluctantly. Take an end of this,’ he said to Kenneth. ‘We’ll give it to Clare. If she has a desk perhaps she’ll do some work.’

  They laid it in the open boot, draped a blanket over it and used more of the twine to hold it in place. Back in the study Clem rolled the Persian rug and put it over his shoulder. He wondered if he should draw the curtains again and return the room to its mourning. He looked, idly, at the frames on the papered walls. A wedding picture posed in a bower of black and white roses. Kenneth on a beach in shorts holding a bucket. Frankie pretending to be Tinkerbell, Frankie at a gymkhana, Laura and Frankie with one of the dogs. Then three grinning soldiers, Uncle Ron in the middle, a photograph Clem remembered from his earliest visits to the house, though he had not been tall enough then to look at it as he looked at it now, his eyes on a level with the tanned and boyishly handsome Captain Harwood. What was the regiment? Kings Own Rifles? King’s African Rifles? They had been in Kenya to put down the Mau-Mau rebellion, that much he knew. These three had posed for the camera at the edge of a village, their faces flushed with heat and the excitement of some recently completed operation. One of them, not Ron, carried a rifle with the bayonet fixed. The photograph had been enlarged without much skill, and the background beyond the shallow depth-of-field was confused, a marbling of light and shadow that made interpretation almost impossible. Something was there, however, a blurred shape that was apparently a man, kneeling on the ground, head bowed, his hands behind his back. A man—or nothing but the way the light had fallen that day, forty years ago. There was a magnifying-glass on Ron’s desk, a fancy piece with a gold rim and green malachite handle that Ron had used to track share prices in the newspapers. Clem cleaned the lens and held it up to the soldiers’ faces, then moved it slowly over the ground behind them.