Late in the Day

by Tessa Hadley

  Alex had wanted to communicate to Chris this afternoon how he felt divided between herself and Lydia, and how his desire was to carry on being connected to both of them. But he hadn’t been able to bring these words out, because he was afraid of her sarcasm transforming his fragile idea into a travesty, a laughable male offence. He saw Christine more clearly now than when they’d lived pressed up too closely against each other: her eccentricity and awkwardness, her dreamy vagueness, and something liberated in how, reacting to events and people, she came out with her startling pronouncements, her raw pained judgements of value and responsibility. Her character was in her face, worn to the fine bone and dimmed without make-up; her coarse thick hair, which she had cut off recently in a ragged short bob, with her own scissors in front of the mirror, was almost all grey now – in contrast to her eyebrows, smooth strokes of dark pelt. When Christine stood up to switch on the lamps, she offered him tea or a drink and he was grateful.

  — Why not? It’s dark enough to drink. Shall I do gin and tonics?

  She said she would do them, conveyed that he mustn’t make himself at home in this flat any longer. Alex was looking around him when she came back from the kitchen with glasses and ice and lemon on a tray. — Is something different?

  — I painted the room. Only white again, but it looks nice, doesn’t it?

  — You did it all yourself?

  — I’m perfectly competent, you know. Iz gave me a hand with the glossing. I was sorting out your stuff to give to you, books and CDs, and then I thought, I might as well clear out the whole lot while I’m at it, give it a coat of paint. I enjoyed it. Like the old days: balanced up a ladder in my dungarees with my roller, hair tied in a scarf, listening to Radio Four. I learned all sorts of things. And there’s more space in here now, it looks better, not so crowded. I’ve changed the pictures round. Also I did the alcoves in that yellow.

  Christine hoped that Alex felt himself shut out of the attractive room. Painting, she had felt as if she were sealing its walls against him, closing out any return of their past together. She had even given a little dinner party in here for a few friends, and enjoyed the ease of her social relations now that she didn’t have to calculate for his severe judgement, his moods. But this afternoon he seemed not to want to leave. They spoke about a play they’d both seen, though not together. For an instant a picture, distinct and materially fleshed out as a hallucination, imposed itself: that one day Lydia might sit in here between them, and their whole history be merely the gaudy backdrop to a new normality. Christine saw her old friend composed and defiantly nonchalant, turning her eyes from one to another while they talked, managing her trick of conveying that she was bored without restlessness, withdrawn inside herself. The idea made Christine nauseous. She hadn’t seen Lydia since they sat together at the concert.

  Alex went to stand at the tall mirror above the mantelpiece, contemplated himself as if he were thinking about something else.

  — Oh Alex, you’re not as young as you used to be.

  He leaned in to scrutinise more critically. — Do I look older?

  — You’re starting to look distinguished and senior, not the fiery rebel.

  — Senior? Surely not yet, he exclaimed. He tilted his head to look from a different angle, dissatisfied. — You see you can manage very well without me, he said, as if she wounded him. — Lydia’s the broken one.

  Christine recoiled, the gin bottle jumped in her hand as she poured. When she sat back in her chair she drew her knees up, pulled the baggy jumper down over them; burying her nose in it she breathed in the safe smell of her father, the detached expert Englishman. — Is that how you rationalise it to yourself?

  — But don’t you think it’s true?

  — You come off very flatteringly in this version of the story. As Lydia’s self-sacrificing saviour.

  Alex dropped his gaze from himself, frowning, and played with the objets along the mantelpiece, adjusting their position without seeing them. These were lovely exceptional things Christine had found over the years: a small drawing of an interior by one of Sickert’s pupils, a glass sculpture like a frozen wave, an eighteenth-century porcelain pink-and-gold cup without its saucer, old type from an Arts and Crafts printing press. He handled them clumsily because she was watching him, as if she were afraid of his dropping something. — The thing happened, anyway, he went on. — So now there’s a new set of circumstances. Everything was changed already, because of Zachary. Everything was chaos. Lydia and I . . . And aren’t we bound to continue, all three of us? Being connected, I mean.

  — Alex, you threw all that away!

  She carried his gin and tonic to the mirror and uneasily they clinked fizzing glasses. The shock of the first cold mouthful in the chilly room was salutary, they surveyed each other with new gravity. — Of course I know it’s complicated, she conceded. — We don’t have to fight. But it’s difficult for me if you come here. I’d rather you kept away.

  It was important for her to say this. And yet whenever Alex announced he was turning up she was excited and roused as if she waited for a lover, a terrible hurtful lover; then while he was in the house she dreaded his leaving as if it would extinguish her. It was easier though, surely, to live without this agitation. Also, his presence forced her to imagine Lydia waiting for him in Garret’s Lane, replete with possession of him. Christine said firmly that this wasn’t his home any longer. She was well aware, though she didn’t mention it, that his name was still on the deeds along with hers, and on the joint mortgage which they were fairly close to paying off. He was still paying the mortgage every month out of his salary, and had given up his place in Gospel Oak because he couldn’t afford it, moved in with Lydia. But Alex would never bring up these material considerations to use against her. He didn’t even mention money, and she could count on his being generous. His outward behaviour towards her was unfailingly gallant and considerate.

  Alex only saw Christine’s finished calm; her struggle didn’t appear on the surface. He felt that she shut him out, with finality. — How is your work going? he asked, as if he were jealous of it.

  She lied, said things were going well and that it was good to be busy again. In fact the door of her studio was still locked. She was lying about this to everyone, she couldn’t speak out loud about the prohibition she still felt within herself, against going back to her art. Her refusal had become a shaming vanity she preferred to dissemble: it wasn’t as if she were honouring Zachary’s memory or anything so sweet. The fear was paralysing; from day to day she postponed confronting it, and sometimes thought that she might never touch her work again. Only then, what would she do with the rest of her life? — And how’s school? she asked Alex cheerfully.

  When he’d gone the familiar anguish of loss cut her down like a wielded sabre: she could have sunk to her knees. Now she burned up for him, when it was too late. Oh, Alex! Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart, My silent heart, lie still and break. But she knew better than to give way to this. Instead, willing her dead limbs to work, she found her bag and her coat and keys and went out. Even the first gasp of polluted city wind, snatching at her when she opened the front door, blowing her along with scraps of greasy litter, restored her sanity like a slap in the face. She wanted to sew new cushions for the front room; a shop round the corner traded in bright wax-resist printed cottons, made in Holland for the West African market. There was an electric bell to press beside the shop door, and when they let her inside the place was noisy with Nigerians buying up bolts of fabric in quantities to fill their suitcases. By the time she’d puzzled over her choice of colours, she was all right again. This agony of parting came in spasms, it appeared; one had only to endure them, to get beyond them. She was pleased with the joyous pink and mustard-yellow fabric when she got it home, and fetched down her sewing machine right away from the attic storage-space. With no one else to take into consideration, she could order her days according to her own whim, sleep and eat and clean up when she liked.


  The cruel truth was, Christine thought, that when she got past the pain and humiliation of their parting, she had no more use for Alex. The pain was a phantom, crying out in longing for something that was no longer part of her. She started and stopped the sewing machine in furious-sounding bursts, snapping off her threads jerkily, measuring for her cushions, calculating. Such ice-cold wisdom: she was half horrified at herself. But it would have been cold wisdom too if she’d taken Alex back – if he’d even wanted it. Once their lives had been full of the hidden meanings each sought out in the other, but that was years ago. And now he’d torn through all those intricate filaments of their coexistence which had bound them, and so she could learn to live without him. He was right: Lydia needed him, and she didn’t. There was always the fundamental question – shied away from in imagination even as she sewed – of her work, what to do. But Alex couldn’t help with that.

  Christine had poured careless slugs of gin, and Alex felt its effects suddenly as he pulled the door of the flat shut behind him: a flare of heightened emotion like a white light in his mind. What if he went back to her? Vividly for a moment he could imagine taking Christine into his arms, comforting her, resuming all the friendly forms of their old life – and he almost turned around, lifted his hand to knock, to appeal to her. He could pretend that he’d forgotten something. Then he remembered the cool self-sufficiency with which she’d said goodbye, that grey glance tinged with mockery. Hadn’t she told him he was growing old? Downstairs in the black-and-white-tiled hall, stale with familiarity, lit by its bare energy-saving bulb on a timer, he checked through the mail to see if there was anything for him – but Christine had forwarded it all. The light clicked off.

  Outside, a gust of wind came buffeting at him out of the dull light, taking him by surprise; scrappy crows joyriding the turbulence had their feathers disordered. For a while he sat in the car without starting it up. Then when he saw Christine coming out of the front door – on her way, it seemed to him, into her unknown new life – he roused himself and drove, but not home to Lydia. He let the road take him, submitted without even inward protest to the traffic at a near standstill on the North Circular, took an exit at random eventually onto the M40. When he stopped halfway to Oxford to fill the car with petrol, he called Lydia and told her he needed to be by himself for a few days, asked her to ring the school, warned her that he didn’t have his charger with him, so wouldn’t be able to keep in touch. He said he didn’t know where he was going. She mustn’t worry.

  A couple of things had happened to Alex recently which were almost nothing, yet perturbed and stirred him. One afternoon when he’d been standing on the crowded Tube on his way home – tired from the day’s work, aware of pressure from other bodies and the noise rushing in his ears – he had watched a brown-skinned woman, tall and handsome, square-shouldered, her hair dyed bright red and clipped close to her head. He liked the way she held herself abruptly upright, building a little fortress of her own taste around her on her seat, listening imperviously to her music, giveaway white wire snaking from her ear; he had fantasised a whole identity for her – probably she worked in the arts, he thought, but in some skilled, technical capacity. In film, perhaps, as an editor. He had felt himself so invisible that he must have been frankly staring: this young woman was probably Isobel’s age.

  As she stood up to get out, her eyes met his, and Alex thought she neither repelled his attention nor encouraged it. Squeezing past, she was pressed against him, her coat hanging open – coolly she flicked her gaze beyond him, bumping his knees with her bag. In a moment that was truly mad, full of risk – and he was tired, he only wanted to get home – he followed her out of the train although this was not his stop, and up on the escalator. In the street outside there was a sticky drizzle, there were crowds – he hardly knew where he was, Holborn. The girl’s coat was light-coloured – he followed her through the crowd, intent upon her. When she turned into a quieter side street her tall black patent shoes, heavy and punky, clacked on the pavement greasy with wet. She had turned round in the street and challenged him. Was he following her?

  — It was stupid of me, I’m sorry, Alex said. — It was an impulse. You’re very beautiful. I had no intention except not to lose sight of you for a short while longer.

  Christine had said to him once that women dreaded being called beautiful: it was like cheap perfume, meant either sex or sentimentality – or worse, both together. Yet he thought this stranger was not entirely disgusted, was even curious, receiving the inevitable male tribute with an awkward laugh, her oblique look glancing off him. Perhaps she hadn’t closed off altogether the possibility of his pressing home his pursuit, inviting her for a quick drink before they parted. Or perhaps if he’d tried that she’d have pushed him away, shouted out in the street, disgraced him. When he stepped towards her, she had flinched. He had apologised again and turned around, resumed his journey home – and of course never saw her again.

  The other episode went further, yet was more ordinary. A teaching assistant had joined his class, she was pretty and flirted with him, and once, when the staff had drinks after school, they kissed lingeringly in the car park. Then he drew back from her, with some relief. After all he had Lydia now. It was both a thirst and a blessing, the late renewal of his erotic life. When he was young he’d been too absorbed in the problem of himself to appreciate possibilities blooming around him everywhere. Now, how long before the women only looked at him with distaste, or pity? He thought that he understood his father at last, how he had accepted this pursuit of women as if it were in lieu of every kind of outward honour. Sex looked like a cheap trick from the outside, but in its moment it burned up the world. You could not have everything: the whole wisdom of life amounted to that. Whatever you had, was instead of something else.

  Those days when Alex went missing – he was away almost a week – were for Lydia a strange interval of waiting. She didn’t know if he was coming back to her. What had he talked about with Christine, that last afternoon before he left? The weather changed, after a first blustery night, to a stretch of mild late Indian summer through all the country: slanting golden light fell tremulously through the windows at Garret’s Lane with their old uneven glass, onto the iron spiral staircase and across the warm yellow-brown of the parquet, the rich rugs. On her way to make coffee in the mornings, Lydia paddled with bare feet in warm pools of light and told herself she mustn’t be afraid in Alex’s absence, must be worthy of him and hold steady. Then she took her coffee back to bed, along with one of the serious books he had recommended. In all that time he was away she hardly went out of the house, though she looked after herself carefully, bathing and washing her hair, eating fruit, taking her vitamin pills daily, keeping away from alcohol. When the cleaner turned up Lydia pretended to be preoccupied, writing business letters at Zachary’s desk.

  One afternoon she telephoned Grace, and was surprised by how easily they talked together: all their old antagonism seemed to have fallen away and it was suddenly simple to be kind. Grace said she might come back to London, nothing was working out for her in Glasgow, she wasn’t happy with having changed from sculpture to painting, she’d lost her way in her art. Lydia encouraged Grace to come home, if that was what she wanted. She could take a year out from her course, or give it up altogether – who cared? When Grace wondered about doing something entirely different with her life, studying to be a nurse, Lydia said it was a beautiful plan. All that mattered, she said, was that Grace was happy. She spoke these words wholeheartedly, and embraced without a qualm the idea of her grown daughter living in Garret’s Lane alongside herself and Alex. She wanted to tell her that Alex had gone and she didn’t know where he was or whether he would return, but didn’t dare speak her doubt aloud in case that made it more dangerous.

  Lydia’s intelligence was cool and unsentimental, she saw her situation clearly, and knew it was possible that she’d lost everything. She had lived with fatal passivity, she thought, relinquishing her own control over w
hat path she took – this had begun perhaps when she married Zachary, or perhaps long before that. Such cowardice anyway didn’t bring good luck. And what would remain of her, if she were left all alone? She might have amounted only to what the others made of her. Bowed under her own judgement – she had spoiled something, and couldn’t be forgiven – she imagined Christine at work in her studio, self-sufficient and fulfilled. Lydia had left behind on her friend’s wall the painting of her best self, could never have it back. Now the short autumn days of lazy warmth and waiting seemed measured by the ebb and flow of visitors in the gallery next door; at a certain time, when the gallery closed, she was aware of chill emptiness on the far side of the wall. And each night she slept alone underneath the terrible quilt the others had sewn, with its scarlet zed; sometimes in the small hours she woke from nightmares and was afraid to fall asleep again.

  She wanted Zachary then, who used to comfort her. Someone had packed away all his belongings, which had been beside the bed when he died, into the drawer of the bedside table; when Grace and Alex cleared his things out of the house they hadn’t thought to check inside this drawer. Alex hadn’t disturbed its contents since, although he’d been sleeping on that side of the bed and must have looked in there. Lydia took out the items one by one and held them, then put them in her lap, feeling their cold weight through the thin cloth of her nightdress: his book and his reading glasses, his grandfather’s clockwork watch which didn’t keep time, his greedy eater’s bottle of Gaviscon. His maroon leather slippers, beginning to be brittle from lack of use, were tucked in together neatly down the side of the drawer. She held these against her cheek and smelled the faint leftover odour of his feet, earthy and boggy, with a tang of the eucalyptus he used in the shower.