Late in the Day

by Tessa Hadley

  It was a relief when school started up again and Alex could take refuge for so many hours of the day inside his performance as Mr Klimec: patient and omniscient, immune inside his dry humour, assertively male and yet sexless and harmless. Whatever else failed, he didn’t have to let down the children in his charge. Lydia tried to give him money for his rent in Gospel Oak but he wouldn’t let her. It was just possible for him to afford it and pay the mortgage and still leave enough for Christine. He ate frugally.

  He was surprised how much he liked his bedsit room. It had nothing much in it apart from a bed and a table and chair, and looked out onto a back garden whose shrubs had overgrown into trees, and where tenants had dumped curiosities – a broken trailer for pulling a boat, a trampoline with rusty springs. Foxes sauntered through at dusk, their hindquarters insolently drooping, inspecting their terrain. Alex chose carefully the books he brought from home, a few at a time, and liked waking in the room in moonlight – he never drew the curtains against the dark – to see their pale promise solid on his table. He was reading anthropology, thinking that after all this should have been his subject – with its long view, its doubt in relation to human universals, its foundation in the idea of cultural difference.

  He marked the children’s work and prepared his classes at his table in the window, then walked out among the elongated late summer shadows on Parliament Hill. The trees’ darkened foliage hung dully and the grass was trodden hard, or was boggy and yellow in patches; the air was stale and blue, its emptiness limp from all the city crowds who’d been and gone. Stopping for the inevitable pastel view of the city, innocuous and miniature at its safe distance, he was ambushed by how close he felt to his lost boyhood and youth – he’d forgotten this pungent taste of anticipation, this leaping up of his heart in fearful excitement, looking around himself at solitary others dog-walking under the spreading trees in the late light. Then he might drive over to Garret’s Lane, perhaps not until midnight. Lydia never came to him in Gospel Oak, he hadn’t given her his new address and she didn’t question him over where he was or how he spent his time. Images of their intimacy suffused his thoughts, but he wanted for the moment to preserve this distance between them. He had a horror of filling Zachary’s place, going out every morning from Garret’s Lane to fetch the newspaper for Lydia, or buy milk for her coffee.

  Margita turned up unexpectedly to commiserate with Christine. She staggered out of the back of a taxi in her kitten heels, bottle of vodka stowed discreetly in a plastic carrier; the taxi lurched off abruptly the moment she shut the door – she always refused to tip. She was breathless by the time she’d climbed upstairs, and sat balancing rigidly upright on the edge of the sofa, with her hand over her heart, gasping. The mask of Margita’s make-up and her stiff hair made her look startled, like an old doll thrown carelessly too often into the toy basket – but actually nothing surprised her. Unclasping her handbag and fishing for cigarettes, Margita found her voice again. — These women are not like us, Chris. We have our own minds. We have education, books, ideas! Some women only think about men all the time, making schemes how to get them.

  Christine had never seen Margita reading anything apart from the Evening Standard. — Lydia had a perfectly good education, she demurred in fairness.

  Margita screwed her finger, swollen around its rings, expressively against her forehead. — Not interested in the theme of reality versus appearances, too busy wondering if she looks nice.

  — I worry, though, that I ought to work harder on my appearance.

  — But Chris, why? If you’ve got a brain!

  — We have to remember that she’s bereaved. Perhaps she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

  Printing her cigarette thickly with her orange lipstick, Margita flicked at the lighter, then mouthed with certainty around her smoke. — Oh, she knows.

  Hannah came to give in her notice and Lydia begged her to stay, apologised for having procrastinated over the gallery’s future, offered her a three-year contract and a free hand as Artistic Director. Of course the gallery must be kept open, if it possibly could! — Oh, it’s viable, if you can get the right continuity, we really think so, Hannah guardedly said. It must be kept open, Lydia assured her. For Zachary’s sake. She would like to be kept informed and involved eventually in a role in management, that was all – and she would be staying on at least for the moment in her home next door. Hannah, who probably knew something about what was going on with Alex, said that she’d think about it for twenty-four hours and then phoned back in two: she wasn’t close to Christine anyway, had always liked Alex better. If Lydia really meant it about the free hand she’d be delighted. — So that’s settled, Lydia said.

  She announced this news to Alex as if she’d done it to please him. And he was pleased, relieved that the gallery would be kept open; although it turned out to be complicated setting up the new arrangements legally, having them approved by the Trustees. As the other executor of the will, Max must be involved at every stage, and was difficult, although – famously oblivious to everyone else’s crises – he surely didn’t know yet about Alex and Lydia. At weekends Alex sat at Zachary’s desk on the mezzanine, working out what Lydia needed from the accountants and her solicitors, filling out the forms for probate, sending emails in her name. Zachary had always done all the practical work in their marriage.

  Of all things, Alex and Lydia had this in common – the loss of Zachary; there was some literal, physical sense in which their lovemaking assuaged their loss. Lydia was generous with herself, with her body – Alex took possession of her greedily, overwhelmed by the release and the relief of the sweetness they went seeking in the dark. There had been other women once or twice, in the years since he’d been married to Christine, but he’d backed off from something glib and counterfeit in those affairs. To his relief, Lydia wasn’t sexually athletic or competitive. Certain revelations of her character – reserves of her self kept back, like candles saved up to light a cellar or a cave – could only be had, he thought, through this sexual connection with her. He began to see how her intelligence was not wide-ranging but concentrated, and how she was remarkably without illusions, and stubbornly wedded to one or two ideas from her early youth. She was frank with him but never spilled over with self-doubt or asked for reassurance, nor did she want to know his secrets.

  He had always been struck by her lack of any ambition for a life lived in public. Now her idleness, which he had once disapproved of, seemed profound to him – like a form of extremity, or a great risk. He thought about the mistresses of bankers and politicians in the past, hidden away behind their flower gardens in villas in St John’s Wood, alone all day with their mirrors and their thoughts. But wasn’t the stupid servitude of their men more degraded, bound to their wheel of daily work and success, their public banality? Strictly speaking, of course, in the material sense, Lydia was in no danger of becoming a kept woman; it was Alex who must look out, in case he became a kept man. When his car packed up, though, it made sense for him to use Zachary’s old plum-coloured Jaguar.

  Theatre and concert tickets pinned to the noticeboard had been bought in pairs months ago, when Christine and Alex’s married life had seemed to stretch harmlessly ahead of them without interruption. Doggedly, Christine insisted on using up all these tickets. She went alone if Isobel couldn’t go with her, nor any of her friends. Wasn’t everyone telling her that she should get out, get a life of her own? Sometimes she didn’t even ask her friends. These solitary expeditions must look as though she were making an embittered point, but the truth was that she struggled with the problem of how to pass the long hours of her days, and – worse – her evenings. The nights were all right; she slept deeply, without dreaming. Alex had always been so restless beside her, twitching and turning.

  The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was playing Lully and Rameau and Handel at the Barbican. In Christine’s past life she’d have run upstairs ten minutes before they left, to change her blouse; now she took her time
washing and dressing, as if she were going to be exposed on stage herself instead of watching – brushing her hair slowly in front of the mirror, braiding it on her shoulder. Her hair was growing too long because she couldn’t face the hairdresser, who would ask how Alex was. She wasn’t trying to make herself alluring, she only wanted her outfit to keep her safe, like a nun’s habit – black crêpe skirt and cream silk shirt, with a black jacket she’d found among Lydia’s things. She still had all those bags of Lydia’s possessions. Whenever Alex was coming to the house Christine imagined thrusting them at him, humiliating him by loading him up with women’s dresses; then in his actual presence she would change her mind. Sometimes she wanted to violently destroy the clothes, sometimes she fantasised that she could hurt Lydia more by wearing and flaunting them. She had picked out a few treasures: a bronze silk shirt patterned with mauve flowers, a green velvet dress. Once she even got out her sewing machine, altered a skirt to make it fit. The skirts and dresses were mostly too short for her; the shoes fitted but Christine couldn’t manage on high heels.

  As soon as she was in the Tube on her way to the concert, and then inside the Barbican, she felt less exposed – only dreaded bumping into anyone she knew, who would ask after Alex. Catching sight of herself in the mirror-glass behind the bar, she thought she looked aged and plain but under control, which was good enough; perhaps her suffering even made her interesting. Because she was early she bought a glass of wine, then sat reading her programme, before going into the auditorium to find her seat. She had always in truth preferred going to concerts and films and exhibitions alone, not having to worry about whoever she was with in case they weren’t enjoying it – or were enjoying something she hated, so that she had to pretend politely, not wanting to appear too opinionated. Even Alex, so clever and so exacting, had lagged behind her judgement in an art gallery, enthusing about the wrong thing or missing what was original and true.

  Already she had an idea about the Lully – stiffly artificial figures moving in fixed patterns around Versailles, pouring into the conventional outward shapes of their music all the liquidity of their repressed passion. At the last moment, as the orchestra began to come on stage, some latecomer made a nuisance of herself, forging along the row so that everyone was annoyed, having to fish for their coats and bags, stand up to let her past. Christine was appalled when this person sat down in Alex’s empty seat: then she saw when she looked round, with a dreadful too-thick beat of blood through her heart, that the latecomer was Lydia. Christine must have made some involuntary snarling or repulsing noise, because one or two people turned around to frown at them. Guilty and uneasy, pulling off a cobwebby scarf from around her neck, Lydia dropped her bag into the dark at their feet as if the seat had been saved for her all along, as if they were old friends who’d planned to meet up to enjoy the concert. She leaned across to whisper in Christine’s ear. — Please let me sit. I won’t be any trouble to you.

  — What are you doing here? What’s happened?

  Lydia shook her head. Nothing had happened. No time now to explain: the guest conductor, hero of the occasion, was making his entrance. If Lydia had come three minutes earlier, Christine would have got up and left, but she was too obediently well trained to make a fuss now that the music was beginning. They sat side by side in a parody of close attention, staring fixedly at the stage, not hearing anything: the first notes the orchestra struck might as well have sounded on another planet. Christine burned with her sense of the trick played on her, and the concert spoiled, and the impossibility of sitting there a moment longer – and then there was the incriminating black jacket. She would have liked to tear it off. How had Lydia known about the concert, and to find her way to the right empty seat? Of course, Alex would have ordered the tickets online, the receipt would have been in his inbox. It was just like Lydia to find out his password and go hunting through his emails.

  Making no effort with the music, Christine was surprised when she began to hear it without thinking about it. Inside the space the music opened – as if it pushed back, for all its delicacy, against some melodramatic smash of closing doors – her consciousness rebalanced and calm imposed itself. For who would care about their passion in three hundred years? Nothing could be more ordinary, after all, than sitting here beside Lydia, whom she had known since they sat together at a school Founders’ Commemoration Day. The two women didn’t look at each other but, suspended in their proximity as time passed, they became used to each other again. At the edge of her sight in the dimness Christine was aware of Lydia’s knee in black tights, and the fluffy sleeve of a cardigan she had shrugged off because she must be hot. So she was mortal still, and not transfigured with her happiness.

  When the interval came, Christine stood up at once with everyone else, meaning to go home. Lydia gripped her arm, pulling her back down; people peeled away, going out of the auditorium for drinks, from either side of where they sat. — Chris, wait, just for a moment. Then I’ll go, you don’t have to.

  A rubbery false composure seemed stretched across Christine’s face. — So, are you enjoying the concert?

  — Alex doesn’t know I’ve come here. It’s all my own idea. He’d hate it, obviously.

  — They’re playing beautifully, aren’t they?

  Lydia looked at her unhappily. — I just couldn’t bear not to have talked to you. It seemed so cowardly. I didn’t want to be a coward, just for once.

  — But I’m not talking to you.

  — I just wanted to tell you some things, so that you knew. Like that I mostly don’t know where Alex is. I spend a lot of time waiting for him, afraid he isn’t coming back. In case that’s gratifying for you. We aren’t like a couple, it isn’t that sort of thing.

  — I’m sure you’ll grow into it.

  — That jacket suits you, by the way. I’m so glad you’re wearing it. And I like your hair longer, it’s softer.

  Glancing down, Christine pretended to be surprised. — Oh, is this yours?

  — I haven’t really taken Alex from you, Chris. People aren’t available, are they, to be taken out and given back like a library book, date-stamped? He hasn’t finished with you, nor you with him, not really, whatever you think. And do you and I have to be enemies? We aren’t conventional, are we?

  — It turns out I’m quite conventional after all.

  — I never complained, did I, when you were so close to Zach for all those years? When he called in so often to see you in the afternoons.

  Christine looked at her searchingly, quickly. — You didn’t mind it, though!

  — Didn’t I mind it? Perhaps sometimes I did. When I went looking for him in the gallery and Hannah said he wasn’t there, he was with you, again.

  — You never said you minded! You should have said. And anyway, we were all happy then, Christine insisted. — It wasn’t anything like this. Everything was balanced differently, there were the four of us. And Zach and I were just talking, those afternoons in the studio. Or he would sit there watching while I worked, that’s all: it was about art, that’s what we cared about, more than anything. We never hurt anybody, or upset them. It’s not the same as breaking the pattern, breaking everything up.

  — Though for that matter I loved Alex first, don’t forget that. You took him from me, in a way. You’ve had his life.

  — But why do you cling to that old story, Lydia – of things we felt and fantasised when we were more or less children? We’re grown-up now, we’re growing old! We have children of our own and they’re grown-up too. You’re such a strange person. Why aren’t you like normal people? You should be keeping out of my way, if you were normal.

  She saw that Lydia was hurt then: she turned her face away. — Grace incidentally has announced she’s giving up working in stone and wants to paint instead. Because of Zachary, to mark the whole change in her life. I don’t know how she is, really. I don’t think she’s all right. I’m afraid for her.

  Christine said crossly that she hoped Grace knew what she w
as doing, you couldn’t just pick up painting on a whim from one day to the next. — How is it that you don’t know, Lydia, that this is not a thing normal people would do, to come to this place to find me and try to talk to me?

  She shook her head. — I don’t know why I don’t know.

  The bell hadn’t rung for the second half of the concert, but people were beginning to take up their seats again. — Alex saved my life, Lydia said. — He saved me.

  Christine looked around her with false brightness, said she was looking forward to Handel in the second half. When the light faded and the conductor arrived on stage again both women were relieved, withdrawing into the shelter of the music, recovering from the abrasions of their exchange – only feeling the pain of them belatedly, in the aftermath. Lydia sat forward in her seat, staring as if she were transported by what she heard, and Christine in the dimness saw an actual glassy tear roll down her cheek, luminous against her skin for a moment, reflecting the lights trained on the orchestra, like one of those tricks which show off a painter’s virtuosity. Lydia hadn’t even cried at the funeral, nor all those years ago at school when their teacher shook her unjustly and cruelly, and Christine had so admired her and taken her part, and had seemed to see in her set pale face something perfected, so brittle and unsentimental.

  Grace bought new clothes from a charity shop in the Great West Road, wore them to a party with green high heels: a stiff fitted dress of green and gold brocade, white fake-fur stole, long white kid gloves. She thought she looked like a queen in exile. At first she was jubilant at the party, circulating regally, dancing with abandon – boys kissed her hand, obediently they knelt before her: she was having fun. Then the night performed its bleak new trick of turning inside out, revealing itself as vacant. Other people’s pleasures receded to a noise in her ears, the ocean in a shell. Too much drink, too much coke, she told herself sternly: beyond a certain point these ushered in a sobriety more dreadful than anything in the daytime. Letting herself out of the party when no one was looking, she stepped alone into the street, the drenching rain welcome. She was looking for a taxi but the night bus came first. There was almost no one on it – too early for the late all-night crowd – but she took a seat beside a young man whose short hair was shaved raw against a sinewy, unhappy neck. He scalded with colour and stared out the window to avoid her. Putting her head on his shoulder, she asked him to cheer her up; he eased from underneath her, complained that she was soaking him. The fur stole was sodden, ruined. What did she have to be sorry about anyway, he asked, apart from the weather?