Treasures of Time

by Penelope Lively

  Laura came out again to say that supper would be ready in a few minutes, and did Tom feel up to coping with those chairs now. She led him upstairs. ‘They’re in the attics, I’m afraid, where you haven’t yet penetrated, but the thing is we shall need them for tomorrow, there just aren’t enough in the drawing room.’ A ladder had to be hooked to a hatch opening. Laura said, ‘Shall I go first? Then I can find the light switch.’ She swarmed ahead of him up the ladder, with admirable agility; she had extremely handsome legs, seen to advantage from this angle and viewed with absolute detachment, just as pleasing objects. Tom, averting his eyes after a moment or so and following her up through the hatch, thought: of course being around in a time when all women wear jeans I probably suffer from leg-deprivation. He thought of those forties film stars, all leg and bright lipstick. Not that that was Laura’s style at all.

  There was a light on now, and Laura was saying should she go down and stand at the bottom and he could hand the chairs one by one. He pulled them to the hatch – nothing was either heavy or particularly unwieldy – and lowered each one carefully into Laura’s outstretched arms. ‘Lovely. That’s the lot. Now it’s just a case of getting them downstairs.’ She disappeared to the kitchen again, leaving Tom to manipulate the chairs.

  Nellie, it seemed, didn’t after all feel up to joining them for supper. Laura took a tray through to her room and then decided that it would be nicer to eat out on the terrace. She loaded food – and a bottle of white wine – onto a trolley which was wheeled out through the drawing room.

  ‘I love alfresco eating,’ said Laura. ‘Not that one often gets the chance, here.’ She filled their plates from the trolley. ‘Lots of salad? You do the wine, Tom dear, please. It’s as good as being abroad. I’ve often thought of going to Portugal or somewhere. Permanently, I mean. A lot of one’s friends have. I’ve always loved abroad, in some ways one feels more oneself in those kind of places.’ She sighed. ‘Danehurst is an albatross, in many ways. Of course, Nellie wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I imagine she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps eventually… Of course I suppose that’s something you could do, if you don’t get a job here.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could.’

  ‘You’ve really done awfully well so far,’ Laura looked across at him thoughtfully, sipping wine, ‘going to Oxford and everything. Your parents must have been thrilled to bits. Did you love it?’

  ‘Well,’ Tom began, ‘yes and no. By then I’d picked up this habit of working quite hard which…’

  Laura cut in. ‘I used to know someone who was a don at your college – a man with a beaky nose called Masterson, did you know him? He wasn’t really a friend, just someone one used to come across at dinners and things, rather nice. Of course in my day it wasn’t so much the thing for girls to go to university, but I daresay it’s great fun now.’

  ‘It has its points.’

  ‘I used to go and see Kate sometimes when she was at college. Actually I always thought there was something a bit bleak about it – all those girls in little poky rooms with their dirty washing everywhere.’

  ‘The dirty washing I never noticed.’

  The meal was really extremely good. The wine too. But there was no way, now, short of barbarous incivility, of getting on the phone to Tony in Marlborough and suggesting a jar in the pub. Laura had moved on to the subject of social mobility and the wisdom engendered by experience. ‘Lots of Kate’s friends were girls from just quite ordinary homes, which of course is such a good thing when they settle down all right. Some of them come unstuck I daresay but really one of the good things about nowadays is the way people are so much more adaptable. One often thought in the old days that more should have been done – not of course that I really remember before the war much but one was much more aware as a child of things being, well, sort of more uneven. People were awfully hard up. But you know, Tom, one thing one does realize, getting older, is that change is inevitable.’ She filled their glasses and stared reflectively out over the garden. ‘Barbara and I were talking only yesterday about how much more confident people are nowadays – ordinary sort of people. Mind you, Barbara is a bit older than I am so she remembers before the war better. And of course having known lots of different types one has had the opportunity to notice, and think about it. What?’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Or words to that effect.

  ‘One wonders,’ said Laura thoughtfully, ‘where it will all end.’

  ‘Yes, one does indeed.’

  ‘Of course in many ways one had fewer opportunities oneself even. Not that I would really have wanted a job or anything like that – I often think Kate is really awfully tied down. But one travelled so much more, which does make such a difference.’

  ‘What sort of difference?’

  ‘To one’s outlook.’ There was an implication, here, that other outlooks had been examined, and found wanting. ‘I’ll just pop in and get our puddings. You might as well finish off that bottle of wine. I shan’t have any more.’

  The meal finished, Laura decided it was getting chilly. They moved into the drawing room, Laura now engaged on recollections of continental holidays, both with and without Hugh. Kate seldom featured. Indeed, considering that Kate was the link accounting for their being together at all, it was odd how rarely she was mentioned. Laura, of course, was not a person who devoted much thought to cause and effect. She was on about the perversities of memory, now. ‘It’s funny how attractive it always seems looking back, like when you were a child it was always nice weather, and yet at the time one didn’t feel it was so very marvellous. But now you wish you were back there – everything seems brighter and better and people more interesting and fun. We had such a super time in Le Lavandou with the Wentworths, Peter and Mary – you wouldn’t know him, he’s rather a well known philosopher who was a friend of Hugh’s. The most heavenly summer. But then it was only the autumn after that Hugh had the beginning of his illness, and of course one had no idea that was in the offing.’ She sighed. ‘So unexpected.’

  ‘The wheel of things.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sir Thomas Browne. Somebody in the seventeenth century. He puts it rather well – “remember the wheel of things”. Just when you think everything’s going along nicely, it’ll go into reverse.’

  ‘Is that the one you’re writing your thing on?’

  ‘No. A different bloke.’

  ‘By the way, there’s some whisky in the drinks cupboard. Do help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well, it does all seem somehow rosier, looking back. I daresay other people get that feeling.’

  ‘He says things about that, too. “Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched from past times. Iniquity comes at long strides upon us”.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can remember all that kind of thing. I never could learn poetry.’

  The whisky was going down very nicely. Tom ceased to regret that drink with Tony, whose conversational responses could, in their own way, be equally haphazard at times. Laura, though, had a particularly fine mastery of the off-the-mark return.

  Tom said, ‘I’ve written up quite a lot of my stuff now – forty thousand words or so. This is the satisfactory part – producing something out of what always looked like the most irreconcilable set of constituents. Seeing that the apparently irrelevant does in fact fit in. Rather like cooking – I always used to be amazed to see my mother conjure a cake out of eggs and butter and cornflour.’

  ‘It would be flour, actually. Self-raising flour. Well, that’s good that you’re getting on with it. So then you’ll have to think seriously about what comes next. You’re rather set on staying in England if you can?’

  ‘Not absolutely. But I suppose given the choice I’d prefer to.’

  ‘I can’t think why,’ said Laura with a yawn.

  It seemed suddenly time to take a more active part in the conversation. ‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘if you’d really like to
know I’ll tell you. May I?’

  ‘Love to hear.’ The look she gave him did not indicate an unusually intense interest. ‘Oh, you mean a drink… Well, yes, help yourself by all means.’

  ‘Right, then. Let’s see what kind of sense this makes.’ He tipped some more whisky into his glass. ‘First of all, there’s the language, which seems to me rather well devised to do what it sets out to do. Of course, our own processes of thought – yours and mine both, which is interesting – are conditioned by its use, so I daresay I’m prejudiced there. And then there’s the matter of what’s been done with it, the fact that quite a few capable people, over the years, have made extremely effective use of it. Oh, I could read anywhere, I know. But I’ve always got a certain kick out of the relation between the place and that to which it gives rise. By which I don’t of course mean the scenery.’

  ‘Hardy,’ said Laura. ‘That’s all set in Dorset, isn’t it? We used to know a woman who knew a relation of his. Her name’s quite gone out of my head – the relation, I mean.’

  ‘Ah. What a pity.’ There is a certain fascination, Tom thought, in talking to – if that is the right preposition – someone who has never, apparently, actually listened to what is being said. It accounts, presumably, for a quite remarkable edifice of self-deception; a monument, indeed. ‘Do tell me if you remember. And then there is also the matter of the place itself – considered quite apart from its literary spawnings. The national stage-set, the background or whatever you like to call it. And that has also always seemed to me notable in a number of different ways – it’s beautiful, often; it’s remarkably various for such a small country; and to anyone with any sense of the past, impressively suggestive. A palimpsest; the original one, in fact. However, scenery is not enough for a thinking person, as I’m sure you’ll agree, so we’ll move on to what might be called the nitty-gritty, nowadays – in other words what it all adds up to. And that seems to me not inconsiderable. There’s political stability and a fair degree of tolerance and a certain capacity to admit mistakes. And, you may well be adding by now, complacency. That’s a point, I concede. But I’m not meaning to be complacent – a book-balancing job, this is supposed to be, no more nor less. For my own edification I’m merely trying to examine my own responses, which is a good thing to do from time to time. We all ought to know how we stand, and why. Where was I? Oh yes, what’s satisfactory and what isn’t. And there’s a great deal that isn’t, of course. Satisfactory is a comparative term – nowhere’s perfect. And of course if you had pronounced political views to either left or right you would be making noises of protest at this point.’

  ‘Actually,’ Laura began, ‘I’m…’

  ‘Quite above politics. Absolutely. So am I, for present purposes. What we’re concerned with now is what one might think of as the outcome of it all, so far. The end product of all the ingredients (back to cooking again, I see) – language, history, ambiance, culture, the lot. I’m using rather pretentious words, I’m afraid,’

  ‘You’re a bit drunk.’

  ‘Oh, very possibly. And for all its shortcomings, which I’m only too ready to admit, I find the end product not unattractive. Oh yes, there’s plenty to make the gorge rise – Rhodes Boyson and Wedgwood Benn and Edward Short and Ken Russell and the Institute of Contemporary Arts and practically the whole of the Midlands and The Guardian women’s page and a good deal else. But being…’

  ‘Is the Institute of Contemporary Arts that place in Piccadilly?’ said Laura.

  He looked at her with admiration. Nice one. ‘But – as I was about to say – being a bloke of low political drive I’m unlikely to do a lot of trying to do anything very active about any of those or anything else, which is in itself I concede a count against me. Low political drive is probably a bad thing. In that, I suspect I’m of my time, or of the times. Even a few years ago, I gather, someone like me would have been more likely to take his indignations to the barricades than to reflect on them in private. Interesting, that. Not only are you a product of the whole long process, but of your own immediate bit of it too. On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much room left for freedom of spirit. And yet, and yet… And yet you see it seems to me that someone like me inherits a great deal of freedom of spirit, quite apart from all the other freedoms that haven’t even been mentioned…’

  ‘John Barclay went to Russia last year,’ said Laura. ‘Apparently over there….’

  ‘Yes. One had heard. And given all that – given certain feelings of respect and affinity and curiosity and interest, I feel an inclination to stick around and see what happens. Just that. Assist at the historical process. And the other thing, of course, is that for better or for worse and like it or not I happen to be a manifestation of the place myself. As also are you, only the difference between us – one of several differences – is that you don’t really give a damn about it and indeed for two pins you’d bugger off to Portugal, whereas I have these rather confused umbilical sentiments. And I…’

  ‘Talk too much,’ said Laura, smothering a yawn.

  ‘I daresay. And now I come to think of it I really can’t imagine why I’m telling you all this.’

  ‘In vino…’

  ‘How true. And perceptive. However, since you aren’t going to remember longer than tomorrow it doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘As it happens I’ve got rather a good memory. But never mind. I won’t come out with embarrassing reminders.’ She looked at him, thoughtfully. After a moment she went on, ‘You aren’t going to marry Kate, are you?’

  In the buzzing silence that followed he took some more whisky. ‘I suppose I’m not. But I’d rather almost anyone than you had pointed it out to me.’

  Laura got up. ‘I think I’m going to bed, if you don’t mind. I’ve had a bit of a wearing day and tomorrow’s going to be busy. You come up when you feel like it.’ She went round the room picking up glasses and switching off a light or two. Leaning over him to check the catch on the french windows she over-balanced slightly and laid a hand on his arm. ‘Sorry, Tom.’ There was a little gust of a rather agreeable perfume. At the door she turned and looked back at him. ‘I feel guilty leaving you on your own like this – sure you don’t mind? Just give me a knock if there’s anything you want, won’t you?’

  There was a fair bit of whisky left. Enough to put paid to the next hour or two, anyway.

  He woke to the most fearful cacophony of birds outside the window. And blinding light. And a headache to beat all headaches. And along with the headache accompanying miseries like nausea and cramp in the legs and a general feeling of being only tenuously connected with the universe. And as he lay pole-axed in this dark night of the soul, there swam into the head the most amazing and unnerving image: the image of Laura, of Laura seated at a dressing-table in her underclothes, one arm raised above her head, holding a hairbrush (thus revealing the curve of an inadequately covered breast), her face turned to his with an expression of… Of what? Of expectation? Of annoyance? Of surprise?

  He shrank in horror beneath the blankets. What was this, for God’s sake? The product of a fevered imagination? Or had – hideous thought – had there come to pass last night in those lost whisky-sodden hours some appalling scene that he no longer remembered except in these horrifying fragments?

  The underclothes were vivid. Flesh-coloured, lacy, and esoteric. Cami-knickers. That kind of thing is called a cami-knicker. How do I know that? he thought wildly, I’ve never heard of them before. Kate wore the bras and briefs familiar to anyone.

  She sat there, Laura, undressed, in a murky light from the bedside lamp, hairbrush in hand, looking at him.

  He groaned.

  The image, of course, was also that of any television advertisement: the pretty, under-dressed woman, in a situation of suggestive privacy. Hairspray; deodorant; soap.

  Racked by uncertainty, his head pounding, he got up and dressed. He did not know how he was going to look her in the face.

  Chapter Thirteen

&n
bsp; The cameras were being set up in the garden for Tony’s interview with Laura. The fine weather was lasting, though the forecasts had talked of thundery showers. Tom stood with Tony on the terrace.

  ‘Kate was held up, I hear.’

  ‘She’ll be down after lunch.’

  ‘You look a bit low. Anything wrong?’

  Tom stared gloomily across the lawn. ‘It’s just possible,’ he said, ‘that I may have made a pass at Laura last night. In fact it’s remotely conceivable that more than that might have happened.’

  ‘Good Lord. I see. Well.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Possible. What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I was pissed, totally. There’s just a kind of impression. Which might or might not be imagination.’

  ‘Ah. Very awkward for you.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘You can’t ever be absolutely sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you couldn’t – er – ask?’

  ‘Christ, no.’

  ‘I see your problem,’ said Tony. ‘I certainly do.’ He put a sympathetic hand on Tom’s shoulder. ‘Well, I’d better get on.’

  Laura – whose manner gave no clues that were in any way helpful – had come out of the house and was greeting the cameraman with the graciousness of a senior actress. She moved across the lawn with Tony, discussing problems of lighting and the disposition of chairs. Tom went into the sitting room and slumped on the sofa with the newspaper. The headache was beginning to wear off a little; he wished he was somewhere else. Anywhere else would do, really. Suppose he suddenly remembered an ailing grandmother and just upped and offed? But Kate was coming this afternoon.