There is a photograph of Imogen with Benoît, an attractive couple, sitting at a café on Place Plumereau; it was taken by a friend of Benoît’s, a colleague from the university. Imogen is looking at Benoît, laughing wholeheartedly, and leaning back from him a little, with a hand raised to her lips; it appears that Benoît has just said something outrageous and funny. He is looking directly at the camera, with the slightest of smiles, and an eyebrow insouciantly raised; his remark has had the desired effect, it seems. The date is printed on the back of the photo; within a few months, Imogen and Benoît would have separated. She had no memory of the occasion of this photograph; what the picture showed did not accord with her memory of those months. She did not doubt the veracity of the image. Her laughter was a fact, but it was a fact that had no reality for her. The picture was almost incomprehensible because, as the date proved, it had been taken a few months after the death of her father. She remembered her grief, the burden of it. Yet here she was, at a café on Place Plumereau, laughing with Benoît. On that date, three elements of her life had coexisted: the bereavement; the end of the relationship with Benoît; the preparations for La Châtelaine. But it was only when reminded of their coexistence, by a piece of evidence such as this, that the three elements were brought together again. As they existed in her memory, they had already become three separate stories.
•
William is now certain beyond all possibility of doubt that Jenna is the pre-ordained soulmate. Yesterday evening she proposed a visit to Tintagel. She has a passion for King Arthur, she revealed. For Jenna it’s irrelevant that there’s no historical connection between any King Arthur and the castle at Tintagel. Tintagel is a magical place; the name in itself is magical. And King Arthur is a magical being. She believes in him the way some people believe in Jesus, she confessed to William, knowing that he would understand, though some of her friends think she’s too New Agey about all this stuff. If it were all nonsense, she points out, why would the story still be so powerful? A trip to Tintagel is a sort of pilgrimage for her, she told William; she goes there every year. He took this as an invitation to tell her more about his theory of energies. What he really wanted to tell her was why it was that he had known, the instant he first saw her, that this was the woman he was destined to be with. But he knows he should not say anything about the London woman. There is a risk that Jenna will take it the wrong way, and think that he has taken a shine to her because she reminds him of another woman, an unforgettable other woman, which wasn’t the case at all—the café woman was just a sign, an omen. But he told her his idea about graveyards. Jenna thinks it all makes perfect sense.
•
At the Cluny museum, some time after the maison de maître, we looked at a tapestry in which David, on the balcony of his palace, gazes in the direction of the bathing Bathsheba. Putting my hands together in a gesture of prayer, I intoned: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness.” Psalm 51 was written after Nathan the prophet had confronted the adulterous king. Imogen did not know the story. Having seduced and impregnated Bathsheba, David summoned her husband, the general Uriah, in the hope that the reunion of husband and wife would lead Uriah to think that he was the father of the child that Bathsheba was now expecting. But Uriah decided to remain with his troops, so David ordered that he be placed in the front line of battle, whereupon Uriah was killed, leaving David free to marry the widow. Their child died, in proof of God’s displeasure. Their second child, however, would survive; he was Solomon.
Imogen blinked and smiled, as if I were a machine that had disgorged information at the touch of a button. “What would I do without you?” she said. Then: “I’m not joking.” We walked to the Métro arm in arm.
•
Yes, Imogen once answered me, she had known several actors to whom the adjective “insecure” could be applied; she could name one—a well-known actress—who had confessed that she needed applause in the way that one needs a mirror. Imogen, however, did not feel that she was an insecure person. On the contrary, she said, she was absolutely secure in the knowledge that there was no secure entity behind the name of Imogen Gough.
•
At the St. Agnes cemetery, Imogen was moved by one gravestone in particular. A male and a female hand, clasped, were carved into a niche in the vertical stone. The last line of the husband’s epitaph for his wife: For nine years we were such friends.
•
Interviewed for the release of Maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort, Imogen named Au hasard Balthazar as her favourite film. In all of cinema, she told the interviewer, there was nothing as affecting as the death of the donkey Balthazar, and that was because the animal had not been aware that it was in a film. There is too much acting in most of the films she had made, Imogen said to me, towards the end. That was why Chambre 32 and Maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort were the ones she liked most, or disliked least. They were the films in which the acting had been reduced to a minimum. The interviewer had encouraged her to talk in superlatives, but she said the same thing to me: Au hasard Balthazar was her favourite film, and the death of Balthazar was the most moving scene she knew. “Apart from this one, of course. This one takes the biscuit.”
•
“If your father had been alive, would you have done it?” asked Imogen’s mother, of Chambre 32. It was possible that she would not, Imogen admitted to me, but not to her mother, who would never watch Chambre 32. Of the films she had made with Antoine Vermeiren, her father had watched only Les tendres plaintes. He understood that nudity might be justified on artistic grounds, but there would have been a terrible indecency in seeing his own daughter naked. The arts in general were not really his thing, he confessed, as Imogen told me. He appreciated their value in principle; knowing his limitations, he was content to leave actual engagement to finer sensibilities than his, such as his wife’s.
•
Lichtenberg: “Imagination and fantasy must be used with caution, like any corrosive substance.”
•
Emma calls, with an invitation: a barbecue. “Sue will be there,” she tells me. It is necessary to refresh my memory. “Sue. Durham Sue,” she elucidates. Sue will be down in London for a week, staying with a daughter. For many years she has lived in Durham; once every two or three months Emma speaks to her; once every two or three years they meet. My sister has an admirable ability to sustain friendships that others would let lapse. It’s simply a question of making a bit of an effort, she has told me. I have maintained no friendships for as long as Emma has maintained a dozen.
Emma lists the other guests. As if as an afterthought, the roll-call ends with: “And Becky will be there as well.”
This name too is not immediately meaningful.
“You met her last year,” Emma prompts. “Nick’s birthday. Tall woman. Fair hair. Glasses. You liked her.”
“I did?”
“Yes. She’s a teacher.”
“Well, I do like teachers, that’s true.” All that comes to mind is an inchoate image of a large woman, of severe manner, with an aura of low-level resentment; I have no recollection of any conversation.
“Tall. Unusually tall. Come on. You can’t have forgotten.”
Another element of her identity seems to arise: “Divorced, messily?”
“She’s divorced, yes,” answers Emma.
“Would this be some sort of matchmaking manoeuvre?”
“Not at all.”
“I see.”
“David, do you have any sort of social life?” she asks. “Going to the supermarket does not count.”
“I’m fine,” I assure her.
“You’re becoming a hermit. Do you want to spend the rest of your days on your own?”
“I’m fine, Emma.”
“As far as I can tell, nothing is happening in your life,” she protests.
My life is not eventful, but is not quite the tundra of tedium that she imagines, I tell her.
“OK, so what are you doing with yourself?
Have you even started that book?”
“I have notes. Many notes.”
“As I thought. I don’t suppose you’ve applied for any jobs?”
“No.”
I am a defeatist, Emma tells me.
The museum sector is not as ripe with possibilities as is the world of commerce, I point out.
“You have been too long at that place,” Emma tells me, not for the first time.
“You may be right,” I concede.
“You need to stir yourself.”
I promise to stir myself.
“And you’ll come? You can stay over. You must stay over.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
“Please, David, come. You’ll meet some nice people. You never know, you might even enjoy yourself.”
I am grateful for the invitation, I tell her, and I appreciate the attempt to fix me up.
“I am not trying to fix you up.”
I remind her that I met divorced Becky last year, and that evidently she did not make much of an impression on me; and vice versa, I’m sure. All we have in common is that we’re unattached, and the clock is ticking audibly.
“She’s a nice woman,” says Emma. “And she liked you.”
“I am touched,” I answer.
“You’re not going to come, are you?”
“Almost certainly not.”
Talking to me is like trying to get fire from a wet log, Emma tells me.
•
“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, cover the soul.” Meister Eckhart.
•
William has cleared the last hurdle: Jenna’s parents have met him, and he seems to have passed the audition. On leaving, he was hugged by the mother. They are affectionate people, with each other and with their daughter, William reports. It’s the second marriage for each of them, and both were into their forties when Jenna was born. One gets the impression that they’ve never stopped feeling grateful for their good fortune, says William. They had tea in the garden, by a huge fuchsia that reaches to the sill of Jenna’s room. She might have been named Fuchsia if the choice had been her mother’s; it would not have been the right name, William tells me. There’s a fine display of roses too; they were planted when Jenna was born. William enthused about the roses, genuinely, which went down well with the mother, and Jenna’s father seemed to like him too, because William made it clear that he appreciates Jenna as she should be appreciated, unlike Max, Tilly’s father. Max was a “complete waster,” Jenna’s dad disclosed as soon as the opportunity for a quick man-to-man arose, over the washing-up. Unknown to Jenna, Max had been a man with a problem: whenever he saw a betting shop, he was compelled to unburden himself of whatever cash he happened to have to hand. He was a roofer, a man with skills, and should have been earning decent money, but instead he was getting deeper into debt with every month. Eventually he owned up; his parents and Jenna’s bailed him out; he swore that he was a reformed man, that Jenna and Tilly could depend on him. Then he did the same thing all over again. “So she kicked him out,” the dad told William. The story, in outline, was already known to William, as Jenna’s father might have assumed. But he wanted William to understand that his daughter was not to be trifled with. “You’re not a waster are you, son?” he asked, giving William the sort of look one might get in the police cells. “I am not,” swore William, and that seems to have been good enough, because he was given a hand to shake. The other hand, William had noticed earlier, was half a finger short of its full allocation. “Lost at sea,” Jenna’s father explained, noting the direction of William’s glance. When he was younger, he had worked on the boats and a rope had whipped a bit of his finger off. Barely any of his old mates have full hands; he counts himself lucky for having lost only a semi-finger. His closest friend had drowned at the age of thirty-eight; Jenna’s father had seen it happen, and that’s when he had decided to get off the boats; he was the same age as his friend, and had been starting to feel too old for that life anyway. William sensed that this was a moment in which he could lighten the mood while showing respect for the hard men: he confessed to the ignominy of his brief career on board. “Nowhere near tough enough,” he admitted. The honesty of the self-judgement seemed to enhance his standing. “Well, son, tough isn’t everything,” said Jenna’s father, and right on cue Tilly came running into the kitchen, for a ride on William’s shoulders.
•
The reflection of myself in the blank screen of the TV, sitting in the light of the floor lamp, glass in one hand and book in another—it brings to mind Imogen’s description of her father, as she saw him one evening. She came downstairs, looking for her brother. The trees were moaning in the wind, she remembered; rain dashed against the windows like hail. On her way to the games room, she passed the open door of the living room. A faint light came out of it, from a single lamp, set beside one of the wingback chairs. This was the chair in which her father would sit to read the newspaper. When he was there, she liked to read at other end of the room, on the drop end sofa; sometimes her brother or mother would be there too, but there was a particular pleasure to sharing the long room only with her father. They would call to each other—“All right there?”—as if in rowing boats on a lake. It was his custom to have a glass of whisky at this hour; a single drink, from a cut-glass tumbler. On the evening of the downpour, when she looked into the room, the newspaper was on the table next to the chair, with the decanter; her father, tumbler in hand, seemed to be watching the clouds that were sliding over the moon. She went to him. “Quite a night,” he said. The weather is all they talked about, as she recalled. That evening, her mother was elsewhere, playing bridge. This was not unusual. Her father could not comprehend the appeal of bridge; only people in prison had a valid excuse for playing card games. His wife had her pastimes and he had his; her interest in vintage cars was as negligible as his interest in bridge, as was to be expected; this was understood by everyone. But a sadness had settled in him. The sadness was very visible on this particular evening, Imogen told me. When she looked back into the room later, on her way to bed, he was still in the wingback chair, looking at the night sky, with the glass in his hand and the decanter beside him; the decanter was emptier than it had been. His hand rose, to put a little more whisky into his mouth, as if topping up the liquid in a machine.
The second measure of whisky became a habit. Sometimes she would look across the room and see that he was holding the newspaper but not really reading it. He did not drink like a man who was suffering deeply; whatever troubled him, it seemed, could be eased with two glasses. Perhaps it was only the cares that come to all people as they grow older, Imogen thought; and there must be other cares that come with this house. But perhaps, too, it occurred to her, as she looked at him, he was nostalgic for the early days of his marriage. This was nothing more than supposition. For all she knew, the early days had been much like these. Her parents’ respect for each other had always been evident, she said, but the marriage often appeared to be more a pact than a romance. She could not recall having seen her parents kiss, except on birthdays and at Christmas and other special days, and those special-occasion kisses had always seemed to be kisses of thanks more than anything else.
•
Imogen’s mother recalled the day she had come to the house with Cressida, before she and Gerald had become engaged. They had travelled in Cressida’s car, a stately Rover that had been discarded by Cressida’s father upon his acquisition of a sleek new Jaguar. The Rover was a thoroughly unfeminine thing, but it was comfortable and Cressida had a taste for eccentric gestures. Other young women of her milieu were driving Minis, but it amused the lissom Cressida to be the pilot of this ponderous vehicle. Her dress that day was a violent shade of turquoise, and had been made by Cressida herself; it was “indecently short,” Imogen’s mother told us, and Cres
sida’s limbs were of uncommon perfection. Men of all varieties had a tendency to fall for Cressida without further ado, even though she was as fickle as a cat, as was evident within two minutes to any unsmitten pair of eyes. “I suppose I was setting him a test,” said Imogen’s mother.
The two young women arrived in the village some time ahead of schedule: the car was powerful and Cressida drove quickly—too quickly, as if assured that her beauty, in combination with the heft of the car, bestowed invulnerability. Within sight of the gates, however, the Rover failed. A terrible din erupted; many pieces of metal had broken free underneath the bonnet and were rioting. Cressida stopped and turned off the engine. The din lessened, but ominous sounds continued; an explosion might be imminent. There was only one thing to do: fetch Gerald. Leaving Cressida to stand watch, at a safe distance, Imogen’s mother ran up the drive. The hero returned with her. “I see, I see,” he repeated, as she described the symptoms; the situation was grave, it appeared. He greeted Cressida with a handshake, appraised the legs with a discreet glance, then advanced fearlessly upon the stricken vehicle. “Stand back,” he ordered, before opening the bonnet. His head disappeared into the jaws of the Rover; he reached in. From the movement of his arm, it was apparent that things were being dismantled. He recoiled, in reaction to a terrible discovery. He leaned further in, to scrutinise the damage. “Is it ruined?” asked Cressida. Gerald stood up, stepped back, and turned to face her. His demeanour signified a poor diagnosis. He took a step forward, and answered, sombrely: “Get back in the car, and drive up to the garage slowly. Very slowly indeed,” he said. “And when you get there...[long pause]...put some bloody water in it.” At which Imogen’s mother, seizing the initiative, exclaimed: “Water? Water?” She rolled her eyes, appalled. “We’ve given it petrol. We’ve given it oil. Is there no limit to the monster’s appetites?” Gerald, she told us, laughed as loudly as a burst balloon. “Then he looked at me,” she said, “and I knew that I didn’t have to worry about Cressida and her legs.” She reprised the response that she had given Imogen’s father, pressing a hand to her chest, aghast at the car’s gluttony. This, I think, was the last time I heard Imogen laugh.
The Great Concert of the Night Page 18
