“Oh do wake up, Martin! That kind of thing doesn’t only happen in books, you know.” She held him in a critical glare. “They’ve really turned you inside out, haven’t they? Hal and Marina, I mean. I remember what you were like the first time you came to High Sugden. Here’s someone rather special, I thought. Someone who might think the way a poet thinks, rather than this endless flatland wrangling between left wing and right. And now look at you – so infatuated by Hal and Marina that you really don’t know who you are any more.’
Martin put down his glass on a side table, stood up and muttered, “I think I should go. I’m only upsetting you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I see.” Grace drew in her breath. “You think I’m just an unhappy woman who drinks too much and cares only about her own injured feelings. Well, I’m not a hysteric, and I’m certainly not a fool. I care about my husband, insufferable man that he is, and I care about my children too. I care about all three of them very deeply, even though they don’t think twice about walking all over me.”
Again he said, “I really think I should go,” and turned towards the door.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me this way.”
His hands hung heavy at his sides. “I don’t see what I can do.”
“That’s what I mean,” she answered. “Your heart needs educating. You might learn to respond a little.” Grace got up from the couch and stood with her weight on one hip, twisting the silver bracelet she wore on her wrist. His gaze shifted to where, through the casement, the breeze was blowing light about the fell.
“Oh do come here,” she said, and when he did not move: “It’s all right. I won’t bite you.”
Her voice had made it seem an act of cowardice to stay where he was, so he took a few steps towards her. Grace reached out for his hands and pulled him closer. He stood a head taller than her, and when he looked down into her eyes they were filled with an amused but reassuring concern. “What am I going to do about you?” she sighed. Feeling him about to pull free, she said, “Marina tells me you’re not a very good dancer.”
This was unexpected. He flushed and said defensively, “I can waltz a bit.”
“Well, I can help you to do better than that,” she said. “In fact, I think that might be quite the best way to start putting you back inside your skin.” Grace freed him from the grip of her gaze and glanced briskly round the room. “We should just about have space enough if you push the chairs and couch to the wall and roll up that rug, while I find us some music.”
He watched her cross the floor to crouch before the radiogram. “Who do you prefer,” she asked over her shoulder, “Joe Loss or Glenn Miller?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think this is…”
“Don’t stand there twitching like a rabbit,” she reproved him. “It’ll be fun! You’ll see. Let’s have Glenn Miller.” She took a record from its cover, placed it on the turntable, and was about to lift the stylus when she saw that he hadn’t moved. “Dear me, you are slow!” she teased. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”
Reluctantly, he helped her to clear a space on the parquet floor. Grace slipped into her shoes and lowered the needle onto the record. The preliminary, dance-band strains of a quickstep filled the room. She came back to him saying, “Okay, hold me like this. Relax a little, for goodness’ sake! Now, on the beat, lead with your left foot.” Swaying, they moved off into an instant collision of feet. In the same moment, both dogs bounded towards them, open-mouthed, eager to join the dance. Martin groaned an apology. Grace laughed at the ridiculous leaping dogs. “I’d forgotten about these two,” she said. “If there’s hugging going on, they have to have some. Hang on, I’ll put them out.” She ushered the setters to the door and came back.
“Marina’s right,” he grimaced. “I’m not good at this.”
“It’s no harder than swimming or riding a bike. You just have to let it happen. Look, I’ll show you.” Grace stood beside him, waited for the music, and then moved her feet to its rhythm, speaking out the beat. “See, it’s easy. Do it with me. These are the man’s steps, look. Just follow my feet. Slow, slow, quick quick, slow. Slow, slow, quick quick, slow. That’s the way. Listen to the music. It’s telling you what to do. Just go with it. That’s good! Now let’s try it together.” She moved round to stand in front of him, offered her arms and stepped in closer. Martin caught the waft of her perfume. He stopped breathing as he put his hand to her back.
“Loosen up a bit,” she smiled. “I’m not an ironing board, and you’re not a tin soldier. And there’s no one watching us. It’s just you, me and the music. You lead, I’ll follow. Like I showed you. On the beat now – go.”
Within ten minutes or so he had grown used to the responsive proximity of her body and begun to enjoy himself. He was pleased that he’d managed to cheer her up so easily. They laughed often, his confidence grew, she was patient with his errors, at pains to release him from his mind and put his body at ease. After half an hour had passed, he was dancing competently.
“All you need is practice,” said Grace as she took off the record and returned it to its cover, “but to make a real dancer of you we should take you to Africa. They’d loosen you up there in no time.”
“God, I’d like that!”
“It’s not impossible. It won’t be long before Emmanuel wants Hal out in Equatoria, and I’ll have to go with him. The kids will be in college, and I’d go crazy here on my own. I’m sure Hal’s already thought about flying you out there with Adam and Marina one vacation.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I don’t see why not. You must have realized he has long-term plans for you. Though whether that’s a good thing is another matter.” Grace frowned. “Anyway, I’m probably speaking out of turn. You’re not to say anything.”
“No, of course not.”
Then Grace said, “You’ve never made love properly yet, have you?
Taken unawares, he looked at her wide-eyed.
“Well?” she pressed.
“Not with Marina,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”
Grace’s expression softened, became more searching. “Not with anyone.”
It was a statement, not a question, but it insisted on a response.
“No,” he admitted, “not with anyone.”
“That’s better. Best to be truthful about these things. Would you like to?”
“I thought I just was.”
“What?”
“Being truthful.”
Her arched brows reproved his obtuseness. “Make love, I mean.” With the palm of her hand Grace brushed back a lock of her hair. “It happens quite often in France, you know. But then in most of the important things they’re much wiser than we are.” Then she added, after a pause, “I’m talking about an older woman initiating a younger man.” She crossed the room to stand close to him. “It’s not so different from dancing.” Lifting his right hand, she pressed it to her breast.
Martin felt as though he was swaying inside. A voice – his own, but hoarser – spoke his thought out loud: “You’re doing this to get revenge on Hal.”
Grace shook her head. “No, Martin. That’s not what it’s about. Hal will never get to know. I shan’t tell him, and I’m quite sure you won’t. This is between you and me. I’m doing it for you. I want you to understand that you’re an attractive young man who still has important things to learn. I can teach you some of those things and would like to do so. In fact, it would give me a lot of pleasure.”
Smiling, Grace put her hand to his chin and turned his face back to look at her. “So are you going to stay,” she said, “or would you rather get on your bike and ride away, wondering for the rest of your life what might have happened if only you’d been a little more adventurous today?”
11
Clitumnus
(from the papers of Adam Brigshaw)
These events began just a couple of weeks after I first came to live at my sister’s hou
se in Fontanalba. I was still in poor shape at that time, but Marina decided it was safe to leave me for a while and took off to Rome for a few days. Neither of us knew that Laurence Stromberg had been invited to take part in a weekend symposium at Gabriella’s villa, so he found me alone in the cottage when he dropped by one afternoon. Apparently he’d been thrilled – his word – to hear that I was in the neighbourhood. But he threw up his hands at the state I was in.
“My dear Adam, this will not do,” he protested. “Paradise may be lost to you, but there is more to life after the Fall than festering in your shell like a hermit crab. You must rejoin the human race at once. I insist on it!” And so on, until I reluctantly agreed to go out to the villa for drinks that Saturday evening.
I found him among a gathering of scholars, poets, astrologers and shrinks who had been invited by Gabriella to pool their wits in splendour. Their theme – De divino furore – was taken from a letter written to a friend by the Renaissance thinker Marsilio Ficino, in which he’d shared his thoughts on some of Plato’s ideas. I learnt that papers had already been given on three kinds of divine frenzy: love, poetry and – Larry’s own offering – the mysteries. That evening, an American professor was to speak on the fourth: prophecy. Larry introduced me to her as a resting actor and his most precious friend. Having embarrassed me on both counts, he left us to chat.
Meredith Page turned out to be an intellectually vivacious woman in her late thirties with a fine scorn for the leather-bound condescension of established academics. Under question, she outlined her own countervailing vision of a world held together by intricate lattices of meaningful events from which, she assured me, guidance can be derived about the appropriate course of action at any given time.
I responded with a weak joke about my own poor judgement and bad timing, and said that my life had taken so many unexpected turns that I’d long since given up all hope of second-guessing the future.
In her mild Californian drawl the Professor pointed out that I was confusing prophecy with prediction. “But don’t get me wrong,” she added. “The future can be foreseen through the power of the prophetic imagination – though you’d better believe the variables are always on the move! But its divine function is to push us into making something new for life by disclosing the secrets of our hearts.”
I must have pulled an uncertain face at that, for Professor Page looked at me with concern. A moment later she was drawn away by her chairman, a portly Swiss astrologer with a benevolent air, who wanted to discuss arrangements for the talk. I was left staring into my wine glass when Gabriella joined me, saying, “Has Meredith put you under an enchantment already?”
“She’s certainly an interesting woman.”
“Yes. She was a sibyl, I think. In a former life.”
“You don’t think one life is enough?” I said.
“With so much to explore? How could it possibly be? Surely more than one life is essential? Even in a single lifetime.”
“This is a very confusing conversation.”
Her onyx brown eyes widened to a stare, then she whispered, “The great Divine commands me to speak, and my words pour out, perfect and purposeful, once they are put into my mind.” She smiled at the incredulity on my face, then laughed out loud. “Those are not my words.” Briefly she rested the fingers of one hand on my wrist. “I was merely quoting an ancient sibyl. No doubt Meredith will have much to say about her. Forgive me, I would invite you to stay and hear, but such things are delicate. A new presence can disturb the balance of the group, you understand?”
Of course I understood, she wasn’t even to think of it. Across the room I saw her husband, the Count, conceal a yawn behind the back of his hand. Seeing himself observed, he smiled my way – a friendly, melancholy smile that seemed to invite me into a conspiracy of bored amusement.
“But I have another idea,” Gabriella offered. “When you are free one day, I shall take you to the fonti del Clitunno, where the waters of the spring reflect not only a person’s outward appearance but also the inward soul. There you will be able to experience the power of oracles for yourself.”
I didn’t like to tell her I’d already been to the Springs of Clitumnus and been disappointed by the place… I’d gone because I’d read Virgil and Propertius and been intrigued by the ancient belief that oxen grew mysteriously white from drinking the pure waters of the spring. But now, as far as I could see, it was the grisly sort of spot where day-trippers stop off for a stroll and a pee. There were snack bars in the glades. People fished for the wretched trout kept captive in concrete tanks onto which a hose pipe sprayed illusory rain, and in a grove where oracles were once cast, you could buy T-shirts quoting Pliny. If the gods had ever dwelt in that place, the twentieth century had surely seen them off.
In any case, I’d already decided not to take this conversation seriously. It was happy-hour chit-chat, no more, and the invitation was a casual gesture of the kind that gets made in one instant and forgotten the next. So I said, “My dear Contessa, that would be very nice,” and thought, gratefully, that I would soon be gone and nothing would come of it.
At that time I did not know Gabriella very well.
Several days elapsed before I saw her again. Larry had left by then, and Marina had not yet come back. I stayed holed up in the cottage, reading, writing unsendable letters, fighting despair. Things were made worse by the return of Captain Midnight, who came in late most nights, on active service again. I had no idea whether it was the same woman he brought back with him each night. What lay beyond doubt were his appetite and energy.
Then Gabriella arrived about ten one morning. I was still in bed.
“You see, I have not forgotten,” she announced as I came down, tucking the tail of my shirt into my jeans. “Today we go to the fonti del Clitunno, you and I.”
“How do you know I don’t have other plans?” I grumbled.
“I do not know. Neither do I care. Today nothing could be more important than that we go to Clitunno.”
Annoyed by her imperious manner, I said, “I’ve been there already. There’s nothing worth seeing. The place affronts me. It’s a disgrace.”
For a long moment she contemplated me in silence. “No,” she said at last, “you are the disgrace, Mr Adam Brigshaw. You lie in your bed too long, you have not shaved for some days, there are stains on your shirt, I can smell the smell of your sleep, you neglect your body as you neglect your soul. Do you think Venus will ever return to your life when you allow Saturn to dull you so?”
“I was at pains to get Venus out of my house some time ago,” I snapped back. “I can’t imagine why you would think I want to let her back in.”
“Because she brings the fragrance of life with her,” she answered. “Because if you try to keep her out, her boar will break into your house and gore your manhood. Is that what you wish?”
A retort was at my lips. I did not utter it. She saw the wince flicker across my face. She read my silence. “Or has it happened already?” she demanded. “Yes, of course. It is inevitable. Then it is all the more urgent that you come to Clitunno and inspect your soul.”
“You can’t really believe all that stuff?” I scoffed. “Or perhaps you can – you and Larry and that cosy coven of fakes and obscurantists who were guzzling your wine last weekend!”
“Basta così! Is it not bad enough that you diminish yourself without insulting those who trouble over you? You corrupt your own spirit so. You defile your intelligence. I will not hear it. Are you the only actor ever to have a catastrophe of identity? Do you think you are the first to lament that his destiny cannot be as he has dreamt for himself? You have suffered an humiliation. Of course you are in pain! No one denies it. But do you think your pain so particular that you are licensed to accuse the universe? Basta! Basta così!”
My indignation was contending with an unhelpful sense of the ridiculous as I started to turn away, but: “Vigliacco!” she exclaimed, smacking the palm of one raised hand with the fingers of th
e other. “Do not dare to turn your back from me. It is time you made something new of your pain rather than permitting it to make something contemptible of you. I intend to see that you do so. Immediately. I shall take you first to the barbiere for a shave. When you are decent once more, you shall make your offering at the fonti del Clitunno.
“So,” she pointed to the stairs, “you will shower now, and put on a clean shirt and trousers, please. Prepare yourself. Vieni. Subito. Andiamo.”
It was the first time I’d ever let anyone else shave me. Composing myself in the chair, I watched Giorgio, the village barber, finish stropping an open razor and lift his glasses from his neck to his nose. He pressed my head firmly back against the leather rest and twisted it by the chin from side to side, appraising his task. In the mirror I glimpsed Gabriella sitting on a plastic chair across the little shop, smiling with approval. I squinted back at Giorgio. Only then did I notice the large cataract in his right eye. But already he had dabbed shaving soap around my mouth and jaw, and was working it to a lather with a brush. Every now and then, as he worked, he glanced up at the game show on a black-and-white TV set perched on a shelf in a corner of the room.
When my face was bloated with foam, he swept the blade across my cheek before wiping the razor clean and lowering its edge again. For many precarious minutes, the blade twitched and slid across my face and neck. A pimple bled and was cauterized. His left hand pushed and pulled with surgical authority, lifting my earlobes, distorting my nose, and tightening my throat until he was content that the skin was frictionless. Then he towelled me dry and applied a lotion of such venomous astringency that I thought for an instant I might faint. Giorgio smiled, smacked his hands together and anointed my chin and cheeks with a fragrant cream before proceeding to pinch and pummel my skin. Lastly, having dusted me with talcum powder, he whipped the towel and sheet from my shoulders and, in a single continuous gesture, stepped back, smartly clapped his palms, and opened his arms in an expansive gesture.
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