‘Good morning, dear.’
‘Laura!’
He had not heard her at all. She was in the doorway of the room, smiling at him, though with something curious and questioning in her expression. She turned slightly to look at the photograph. ‘All so terribly long ago,’ she said. ‘Another world, wasn’t it?’
Clem asked if she minded him taking the rug. ‘I feel I’m looting the place,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It needs a bit of looting. Ronny was terribly fond of you, you know.’
‘I was fond of him, Laura.’
‘He was always so excited when you were coming down. You and Clare. Thought you were a very promising boy. Very promising.’
Clem put the glass back on the desk, positioning it exactly as he had found it. He felt obscurely ashamed, guilty of some lapse in taste, a clumsy trespass on her feelings. He wanted to say, You must miss him still, but when he looked up towards the door again, she had gone.
At the cottage, they carried the little desk into the living room, setting it between the fireplace and the window. The living room and the dining room were joined by an archway. In each room there was a single window with red and brown curtains. He put the rug in Clare’s bedroom, then some flowers—he didn’t know what they were called, small purple flowers—in a glass on top of the chest of drawers. In the garden the dog snapped at the bees around the honeysuckle. Clem sat on the back doorstep and wrote out a list of provisions. Behind him, Kenneth waited for fresh orders. Clem tried to dream up a job for him but in the end merely asked him to keep an eye on things. He put the list in his pocket and set out for the village shop.
The road through the old village—Old Colcombe—was steep and narrow and lined with small grey houses. The village hall was there, and on the other side of the road the graveyard and squat tower of the church where Frankie and Ray would marry. Though it was in the old part of the village, this was the ‘new’ church. The other, Saxon or Norman, had been abandoned with its settlement some time in the fourteen hundreds, an attempt to escape a disease they did not understand and could not fight. How many were there on that journey? Clem knew what a train of refugees looked like—he had photographed such pitiful sights more than once—but found it difficult to envisage English refugees in English lanes, the young on foot, the elderly in carts or on the backs of animals. They had not come far, though to some, unused to straying out of sight of their roofs, the smoke of their own chimneys, it must have seemed an epic distance. Then the raising of a church, the building of houses and barns, the making of new paths while half of them still grieved for those they had left behind in winding-sheets. A huge undertaking! A huge investment in a common future.
Abutting the graveyard—some manner of planning irony—was the recently erected health centre where Clare had her five-thirty appointment with Laura’s doctor. The shop was on the junction at the top of the hill. To the right the road ran east towards Frome. To the left was a chip shop, a garage, the British Legion building, the little estates of post-war housing. Clem parked in the forecourt of the British Legion and walked the twenty yards to the store. Nothing much had changed there. The same unlit windows, the milk-crates (metal once, now orange plastic) stacked outside, the door-glass stuck with handwritten notices on squares of card offering rabbits for sale (pets or food?), a second-hand washing-machine, a second-hand coat, barely worn. Other villages, nearby, with their beamed coaching inns and elaborate traffic-calming systems, seemed to have some secret history of affluence and rustic culture that Colcombe was untouched by. There were no quaint traditions here that he knew of, no hunt meetings or mummers’ plays, no village green even. A curious lassitude prevailed, as though that five-hundred-year-old escape from pestilence had exhausted all ambition. The village could have been the suburb of some undistinguished county town. Its charms were incidental. There was no interest in the picturesque.
He took out his list and began to fill a basket. A few of the vegetables—mired and unappetising roots—were apparently local, though almost nothing else. The bread was sliced and sealed in plastic bags; the eggs came from Kent. A new freezer cabinet was stocked with brighdy coloured boxes of ‘Chicago-style’ pizza. Clem thought of his local shop in the Grove, the garlic and fresh chillies he could buy there, the sweet potatoes, bell peppers, homemade hummus. You could also make cheap calls—Addis Ababa, Bangalore, Freetown—from one of the makeshift booths at the back of the shop, then get your change from a girl with hennaed hands. Was large-scale immigration the English countryside’s best hope? (Who would he have to vote for to get such a measure proposed?) The last new blood in Colcombe—a story Ron had liked to tell—had come with the Italian prisoners-of-war who worked in the fields around the village and left behind them in ’45 a clutch of dark-eyed babies, and at the mouth of a track that led nowhere, a pair of white Corinthian pillars that still stood, visible from the road.
Kenneth helped him unpack. Milk, cheese, eggs and yoghurts went into the fridge (a machine that constantly shivered as though with a sense of its own cold). Tins, a box of cereal, a box of rice, the sugar, tea and coffee, they lined up on a shelf. Thinking of the sweet tooth the cook at Ithaca had mentioned, Clem had bought a chocolate cake and two jars of raspberry jam. The bulbs, ten of them, he hid away in a cupboard, then took two out again and put them on the mantelpiece. It was midday. He made a quick tour of the house to see what was still missing. Lamps. A radio. Books? Something for the walls, something decorative, homely. He whistled the dog in from the garden and walked with Kenneth to the pub. There were two in the village; the nearest was the Pump, a place apparently afflicted with the same softening of the foundations that was slowly destroying the cottage. A Union flag hung limply over a car park empty except for a pink caravan propped on bricks. Inside, the pub was dark as a Spanish church. Two men—the only other customers—sat on stools at the bar and now and then grimaced at their reflections in the tinted mirror behind the spirits bottles. Clem asked the landlord if he had something for lunch. The landlord consulted his watch, looked briefly peeved, and called through a hatch. A woman came out followed by a muzzled Alsatian. She told Clem she had some Scotch eggs, otherwise it was just crisps. Clem ordered the eggs and two pints of bitter shandy. He wondered if Kenneth knew how to play bar billiards but when he placed the cue in his hands his cousin gazed at it hopelessly as though it were an old cross-staff he had been asked to go outside with and use to measure the angle of the sun. Clem sank the balls on his own. A bell chimed on the microwave. The woman found a tomato and cut it in half, sharing it between the two plates. Clem ate a mouthful of his egg, then pushed his plate away and smoked. Kenneth finished both their lunches, belched loudly and grinned (a Harwood after all). Clem promised that next time they would go to the chip shop. The dog licked at something under the bench. Clem went to the urinal, a rank shed tacked to the back of the pub. When he collected Kenneth and the dog he did not take the glasses or plates back to the bar. For very little money he would have bounced the landlord’s head on the bar and told him to go and buy some Chicagostyle pizzas. Two or three times a day he had these fantasies of aggression, minute-long cartoons of havoc that poured the adrenaline into his blood and left him dizzy. Walking in the lane with Kenneth, he thought of the man in the white linen jacket. Where was he now? Was there anything to show still what had happened to him? A little scar, an obstinate bruise? Clem hoped he had drunk it away, the memory of those minutes dissolved by a bottle of Cognac, or changed into a story that, over time, might become almost funny. ‘There was this chap on the plane. Never clapped eyes on him before. Completely mad...’
They went up to Laura’s for a last load. Laura and Clare were in the garden. Clem waved and made a gesture to show he was still working and that he would come back later. He found a lamp with a kitsch turquoise shade for Clare’s room, and a pair of Anglepoise lamps for downstairs. On the first-floor landing he stopped in front of an oil painting he liked, a still-life of bread, cherries, an e
mpty glass and a clay pot, all arranged on a white or blue-white tablecloth against a blue background. He lifted it off its hook, mimed hammering to Kenneth—he had already fallen in with Kenneth’s style of communicating—and was led to a tool-box in the garage where Laura’s dormant Volvo was parked under a faded green tarpaulin. There were tins of paint here too, and brushes stowed neatly in bracket-clips along the wall. They helped themselves, went down to the cottage, and put a layer of white gloss around the frame of the kitchen window, then touched up the woodwork in the bathroom and in Clare’s room. In the dining room Clem knocked a pair of nails into the wall and hung up the painting. The quality of the piece was not, he thought, exceptional—the cherries were flat as coins, the table tilted so that nothing could possibly have stayed on it but immediately it loaned the room its warmth, the decency of its ambition, an energy Clem ended by describing to himself as ‘moral’, though, as always, the word confused him. Could a painting be moral? It was an object, a production. Yet in the picture’s presence certain wrong acts (who was the figure in the background of the photograph? What had those smiling young soldiers done with him?) might be harder to commit. He remembered Boswell speaking airily of ‘a power beyond reason’. He was right. Art was nothing if it was not in some way magical. But what did Clare believe? Did she have ideas about art that went beyond the aesthetic, the political, the art-historical? He didn’t know.
He washed out the brushes, washed his hands, and drove to Laura’s. Laura and Clare had moved their chairs under the boughs of a chestnut tree. There was a folding table there with a jug and some glasses. Clem and Kenneth sat on the grass by the women’s feet. Clem told them about the visit to the pub, adding a few touches of his own invention. He had hoped the Pump’s absurd failings might make Clare smile, but some anxiety—one of those experienced-as-real fantasies he was supposed not to collude with—was distracting her. Though she tried to follow him she could not prevent herself turning her head every few seconds to the gate, as if, hidden in the deep shade there, something was spying on her, waiting for some lapse in her vigilance.
When the jug was empty Clem went into the house to collect Clare’s cases. Tonight they would sleep in the cottage and he would know if this—what was it? an experiment? a salvaging?—was possible or not. On the driveway Laura quietly pressed him to come up for supper but Clem said he had bought things. It was, he said, better this way; she was not to worry about them. She kissed his cheek, kissed Clare’s, and waved them off as though they were setting out cross-country and would be gone for months. Five minutes later Clem carried the cases into the bedroom with the Little Prince wallpaper. When he came down Clare was running her fingertips over the polished surface of the desk.
‘For you,’ he said. ‘In case you wanted to do some work.’
‘Work?’
‘If you fancied it.’
‘What would I do?’
‘The Géricault?’
She shook her head, mouthed something, and for a moment—several seconds—seemed to forget that he was still in the room with her.
‘We should think about going up for that appointment,’ he said.
‘I can’t go,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s important.’
‘I can’t go.’
‘Clare?’
She turned the chair by the desk so that it faced away from him. She sat down. He studied the back of her head for a while.
‘Then I’ll cancel it,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you really want.’ He went outside and leaned against the wall of the kitchen where the bricks were warm from the sun. A blackbird made a low pass, right to left, across the width of the garden. It perched on a fence post and began to sing. The sound was delicate as stitching. Clem let his eyes close. He was almost asleep (sleep as enchantment) when Clare came out to tell him she was ready.
At the health centre he gave Clare’s name to the receptionist. The woman found the appointment on her computer screen—five thirty with Dr Crawley—pressed a key and sent them through to the waiting room. The room was colour co-ordinated. Blue seats and yellow walls; prints of yellow flowers in blue vases or yellow houses under blue skies. He fetched some magazines and sat with Clare towards the back of the room. The other patients were mostly pensioners or mothers with young children. There was some coughing. A fly buzzed around the leaves of a yucca plant. At intervals a doctor would appear with someone’s notes in his hand and call a name. Clare fidgeted with her glasses. Clem read half an article about the daily routine of an actor he had never heard of. He wanted to think of something encouraging to say, then wondered if he had time to go into the car park and smoke. He was about to ask Clare if she minded being alone for a minute when her name was called. A woman in a crumpled linen suit was standing by the passage to the consulting rooms. She called a second time.
‘It’s OK,’ whispered Clem, touching the back of his sister’s hand. ‘Laura says she’s great.’
Clare stood, visibly gathered her courage, and walked to where the doctor was waiting. The doctor looked to see who she had been sitting with, then flashed a smile at Clare and led her away. They were gone for forty minutes. The last mother and child were seen, the last of the pensioners in his summer overcoat. Eventually there was no one but Clem. He ambled round the room, stepped over the ugly toys, read the telephone number for people wanting to quit smoking, then frowned uncomfortably at a poster in which a retired sports personality—someone whose picture Clem had pasted into a teenage scrapbook—exhorted men to talk openly about impotence.
The receptionist came in. She grinned and nodded as though to show Clem that she knew why he was there and respected his involvement in a case of unusual seriousness. She asked if he would go down to the doctor’s office. She pointed the way. In the passage there was a soft humming of electrics. Clem stood outside Crawley’s door, listening for voices. He knocked; Crawley opened the door. ‘Oh,’ she said, as if she had already forgotten having sent for him. ‘Take a seat.’ She pointed to the chair next to Clare’s. The black glasses had come off. He could see his sister had been crying but could also see that she liked Crawley and that something useful had happened between them.
‘I wanted to say a quick hello,’ said Crawley.
‘Yes,’ said Clem.
‘I’ve arranged with Clare to have a double appointment once a week for as long as you’re down here or for as long as we think it’s necessary.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We can review the medication. Monitor her general health. See what extra help may be necessary.’
‘Good.’
He thought Crawley looked as if she, too, were in need of copious rest. She had the haven’t-slept/just-woken face of a scholar, but she regarded him very steadily. She did not seem afraid of silences between people.
‘Clare tells me she’s worried about your eyes. Are they troubling you?’
‘My eyes?’ He glanced at Clare. ‘No,’ he said. He paused. ‘Or this one, a little.’ He touched his cheek below his right eye.
Crawley picked up a pencil torch from among the clutter on her desk and walked to his chair. She tilted his head back and shone the light in his eye. ‘Look up,’ she said. ‘Right, left...’ His eye began to water. She turned off the torch and sat down.
‘I’ll write a prescription for eye-drops. Something to take any irritation away. I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Radstock for it. There’s no chemist in the village.’
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Clem.
‘I doubt it,’ she said, ‘but with your family history you should have a proper examination.’
‘What about Clare’s eyes?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Clare’s eyes.’ She scribbled on a pad. ‘I can arrange an appointment for you at the eye hospital in Bristol. It may take a while to come through.’
He thanked her for this and tried to guess what it was that made her someone to whom he immed
iately wanted to tell everything. There was no obvious effort on her part to appear noticeably zealous in her work, more compassionate than other doctors, more competent. Her style was somewhat dry, shy even, as though she might have been more in her element in the pure sciences. What was it, then? What was this atmosphere radiating through her skin, the creased linen of her suit? It was a case, he decided, of ‘principled bones’—one of Nora’s expressions. A person with principled bones, which meant, he thought, the ability, innate or learned, to take another person’s difficulties as seriously as your own. It was exceptional. If she asked him what he had seen on the hill with Silverman he would tell her. He would take the pictures from his wallet and line them up on her desk.
The Optimists Page 13
