All Souls (22 page)

But we touched on none of that - with me saving up my little speech and she her generous response - until after supper and
our walk along the endless beach, until after we'd returned to the hotel room knowing that the most arduous part - the representation and figuration - was still to come. That's why we'd saved our energies (verbal and valedictory) during the car journey and during our visit to the fake palace, the Royal Pavilion, with its crenellations and pinnacles and lattice screens, during our shopping trip in town (there was always a second-hand bookshop waiting for me wherever I went in England, always handbags for Clare and a present for the child Eric) and during supper, looking out over the beach and the incoming tide, and during the walk in bare feet, my feet bare too, my shoes dangling from two fingers, middle and index (with no need for gloves this time). And when we'd gone upstairs after that day of occasional remarks and long silences (not that it was late, for we knew there were still hours to go before we'd call it a day and try to sleep, but perhaps we wanted to avoid making it too tiring or too truthful), she, as was her custom, removed her shoes and I did not, despite the sand in my socks, and she lay down on the bed and her skirt rode up, as it was prescribed that it always would, to reveal her legs, not strong and slightly muscular as they were for others, but slender and almost boyish in their movements. That night we were free to eternalise the contents of our time, or enjoy the illusion that we did so, and that's why there was no hurry, not even to start talking, not even to kiss, not even for my cock to go to her mouth or her mouth to my cock, or for my cock to go anywhere. The spring night had an appropriately spring-like air to it and one of the windows — the one that allowed a glimpse of an occasional incongruous minaret or onion dome floodlit in the background - was open. I leaned my back against the window frame. From there, through the opposite window, I could see the beach and the water.

I lit a cigarette and said: "I don't want to leave, Clare. I can't leave now," and I thought that those two remarkably similar sentences might be enough in themselves to prompt her to take the floor to give some answer (and I was immediately aware too that, although she did begin speaking I was still thinking, not resting). She spoke but didn't answer (not exactly, for she answered with a question).

"You mean leave Oxford?"

I said: "Yes, or rather, no. I suppose I do want to leave Oxford, and anyway I've no option, my contract runs out. But I don't want to leave you. I've missed you so much during these last interminable weeks, and I don't want to be separated from you for purely geographical reasons, that would be ridiculous," and I thought that in saying that I had been even more explicit, as earnest conversations between lovers demand, since they are obliged to flow over flat ground, through all that is diaphanous, all that is yet to be.

"Geography can be a very powerful, not to say, implacable reason for people to part. You don't want to leave and you do want to leave, you don't really know what you want. I know that I can't and don't want to leave. But it doesn't matter whether you know what you want or not, because you have to leave anyway, and you will. There's no point in talking about something that's settled already."

I said: "You could come with me," and thought, to my surprise, that in saying that I had said almost all that seemed necessary to say (given that I had to be explicit) on that Saturday night in June in Brighton (and I also knew that Clare would say it was impossible.)

"Where? To Madrid? Don't be absurd. That's impossible."

I said: "But would you come with me if it were possible?" and thought that I was thereby giving her an opportunity, too, of saying she would do something both of us knew was out of the question. But she let it pass, for that was my role, not hers.

"Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know how you propose that should happen."

I said: "I don't know how, we'd have to find a way; you can
always find a way if you really want to. But first you have to want to find it, I need to know if you want to come with me, or if you're prepared to consider it; and that you won't let there be another four weeks like the last four. And if I see your son I don't want him to look at me oddly, I want him to get to know me and to live with us if we live together, I want him to be my son, or rather my stepson. I can't live without you, even if it is a bit late in the day to realise that, when I'm going to be obliged to live without you. But that's always the way things happen," and I was surprised to find myself daring to say (much too early in the conversation) things I hadn't even foreseen myself saying or was even sure I wanted to say, either at the beginning or perhaps even at the end (the word "together", the word "son", the word "stepson"), but I thought, too, that my last sentences, including the very last, had been acceptable within the narrow range of possible varieties of behaviour in non-blood relationships. Now it was Clare's turn to be surprised, at least a little, although, inevitably, her surprise was only a pretence. But her pretence took the form of not being surprised, which is one way of handing back the surprise (or its pretence) to the other side.

"Whether it's late in the day or not is irrelevant," she said, and lit the first cigarette, the first threat to her tights, that she'd smoked since lying down on the bed: she'd scarcely smoked at all during supper or during the walk, as if she were saving it for the night and for the room. "It isn't a matter of timing, because there never was a set time for that. It was outside of time, there was never any question of it, and there still isn't, now even less so. You'll go back to Madrid soon and in a way it's better that we haven't seen each other over these last few weeks, that way we've got used to it, at least I have, quite a bit. You're all alone here; back in Madrid you won't miss me so much. With each day that passes I'll seem more distant and more diffuse. There's no point talking about it. Let's have as nice a weekend as
possible and then say goodbye tomorrow. At least we've had some time alone together. That's enough."

I said: "As easy as that," and thought that at last she'd taken charge of the conversation and that perhaps I would not even need to speak further, just listen and rest.

"No, it isn't easy at all, don't imagine it's easy. I often thought about you while Eric was at home, and I'll often think about you when you've gone."

I said: "But I'll think about you all the time, the way I have these last four weeks. If you don't want to come with me, then I'll have to find a way of staying here, even if it's in another job," and I thought that really I had no desire to stay in Oxford teaching Spanish in some language school, or in London working for the BBC (it was the only thing that occurred to me at that moment, nor to end up looking like a blue-eyed Chinaman, as perhaps she had, having spent her childhood far off, in Delhi and in Cairo.

"You wouldn't last much longer here; you miss your country more than you think. If you were to stay, I wouldn't be with you, or at least it wouldn't be any different from the way it has been up to now. We'd go on seeing each other like this, in hotels, or between classes at your house or mine. We've never talked about this, I suppose out of mutual courtesy and because it was taken as read somehow. There was no need to talk about it, there wasn't time; we didn't want to spoil our little holidays. We've never really talked about anything much. But I'll never leave Ted."

Within the rules governing the steps to be taken in diaphanous conversations about the future (steps that are mere formalities) I had two options then: I could ask (I looked across at the beach) if she would never leave Ted because in spite of everything she loved her husband (but on that Saturday night in June in Brighton I didn't want to run the risk of hearing that or of having to try to deny it by resorting, inevitably, to boasting);
pretending that the former possibility didn't exist, I could reproach her with her lack of daring and her bland acceptance of the status quo (I turned round and looked out at the domes: I threw my cigarette out of the window - like a coin - and kept my back turned to her while I talked), with her acceptance of things that I had never witnessed and for which I felt neither responsibility nor respect. Whether or not I chose the second option became a matter of indifference, however, since Clare answered as if I had decided on the first.

"I'm not going to give you a speech about how I'm still in love with Ted because I don't know if I am or, if I am, in what way I am, and on the other hand I do know that I'm not in love with him the way I was years ago, when we got married, or before or since then. The truth is I don't think about it much, I'm not used to asking myself that question. But even if it were true that I am and I were convinced of it, I wouldn't say so to you. It's absurd for a woman to say that to her lover, or for a man to say it to his, and even less to someone who's not just a casual affair, but someone one has known and cared about for some time. I couldn't say it to you with any conviction, even if I were sure. But it's not necessary. It's enough that I tell you that I like living with him, you know that already. It's not just that it's pleasant, it's that I'm used to it. It's the life I chose, and I continue to choose it out of all the other lives I could choose to have, let alone those I couldn't. Having a lover doesn't contradict any of that, nor would it even if I were to be a little ridiculous and tell you that I loved Ted more than anything else in the world."

I said: "Lovers take time, we're wilful and over-enthusiastic, isn't that it?" and thought that though I had certainly taken up Muriel's time and been wilful with her, I could never have been accused of being over-enthusiastic.

"You're a fool," said Clare as she had that fifth of November in her room in All Souls, in Catte Street, across from the Radcliffe Camera, and it was therefore the second time she'd called me a fool (without my taking offence on either occasion): she was annoyed by my remark and doubtless annoyed because I'd interrupted her when she was all ready to take the floor and conduct an infantile conversation with me (when she was all ready to put an end to the whole wearisome business), to go through the whole process: the approaches, the consummations, the estrangements; the fulfilment, the battles, the doubts; the certainties, the jealousies, the abandonment and the laughter. "You're a fool," she said. "Yes, lovers do take time, yes, they are wilful and over-enthusiastic, but not for long, and that's just as it should be. That's your function and also your charm. Mine too, don't forget, as your lover, and even though you're not married. Our role in life is not to last too long, not to persist or linger, because if we stay too long, the charm fades, the suffering begins and tragedies happen. Stupid tragedies, avoidable, self-inflicted tragedies."

I said: "I can't say I've noticed many tragedies happening nowadays," and thought that between Clare and me no such tragedies were possible, in Oxford or in London, in Reading or in Brighton. Not even on Didcot station.

"It doesn't matter if they happen now or used to happen in other times, one time is much like another, even though it may not seem like it. And anyway, who can know any time other than their own? Thirty years ago, that is during my own lifetime, I did see a tragedy, doubtless a stupid one, and since then, or perhaps since I realised I saw it, I've spent my whole life trying to make myself invulnerable, to be pessimistic and cold enough to prove invulnerable to just such stupid tragedies; to be immune to them and not to inflict them on myself. You've seen nothing and so there are still many things you can afford to think, but I can't. And I don't want to."

That was when Clare, lying on the bed with, to one side, the beach and the water and, to the other (in the background)
the outlandish imitation Indian palace and (in the foreground) the man who'd been her lover for sixteen months and was in the process of becoming her ex-lover, that was when Clare (as if she were a man), decided she was ready to recall out loud things from the distant past. That was when the conversation between lovers stopped flowing over flat ground, through all that is diaphanous and all that is yet to be and to judder instead over rough and rugged terrain, through all that is opaque and all that is already past.

"Listen," she said, lighting a fresh cigarette and leaning her head on one hand, her elbow resting on the bolster on the double bed (that's how she prepared herself to recount to me the melodramatic episode involving a particular death with its several witnesses and about which the only surviving one could remember nothing). "Listen," she said and I turned round again to face her when she said that, turning my back on the inland-facing window again; as I did so, I couldn't help noticing that with that sideways shift towards me her skirt had ridden up even more: it was almost as if she wasn't wearing one. "Listen," she said, "my mother had a lover who stayed too long. His name was Terry Armstrong and I don't know who he was or what he did, it all happened when I was three, and I only found out about him long afterwards. He left no trace. Only when I was old enough to ask more about my mother could I ask others, although since I was only ever given one version or one answer, I've had to assume them to be correct simply because they're the only ones I got. My father's always maintained an aggrieved silence about it, and perhaps not just because he doesn't want to talk about it, but also perhaps, I sometimes think, because he may not know the whole story; he wouldn't be able to tell me the whole story. The only person who wanted to tell me about it, after a while, was Mrs Munshi, Hilla, my nanny, the nanny who looked after me in Delhi. My father, on the other hand, has always refused to answer me when I've asked him
about or accused him of something, which means that he's never actually denied anything, he's never denied what I told him the nanny told me. Every time I raised the subject, he'd get up and leave the room, a black look on his face. I'd follow him right to the door of his bedroom, insisting that he tell me, but he'd just shut himself in and not come out until hours later, for supper, as if nothing had happened. But it's been ages now since we engaged in those struggles, now it never even occurs to me to insist on answers or to have it out with him, I never talk about it or even attempt to do so, with him or with anyone else, and Hilla died years ago, here in England where she'd moved to be with her sons and her grandsons. I don't even know if I should talk to you about it, but it doesn't matter, and anyway you'll be leaving soon," and I thought that, although it wasn't strictly necessary, it was nice and something of an honour to be given explanations by Clare as if on that night in Brighton they were necessary; and I thought too: "It's true. Once I've left, what possible importance can what is happening now have? I'll leave no trace. Like Terry Armstrong." And I paused over that name: "Terry Armstrong." But while I was thinking this, Clare had continued talking, her gaze growing ever more abstracted, ever more fixed, the gaze of one reminiscing or telling a story. "According to my nanny, Terry Armstrong, of whom she never knew anything more than his name, was, like all good lovers, over-enthusiastic and wilful. One of those men who write letters and poems with just the right mixture of seriousness and irony, who are full of infectious energy and vitality and engender laughter and hope in the person who feels loved by them. He'd come and go and no one ever quite knew when he'd reappear, he was stationed in Calcutta, possibly in the diplomatic corps or just there on his own account, probably the latter, since his name doesn't appear in the files of the diplomatic corps; I wrote to them for information when my curiosity about the subject was at its height, at its most urgent. Perhaps it wasn't his real
name, I don't know; perhaps only my mother knew that, or perhaps not even she did. In any event he must have been in India for some time or had been there before, because he spoke a little Hindi to the nanny, just to flatter her, she said. He flattered the nanny and flattered my mother, that seems to have been his main function. For the nanny he was never more than that, a flattering presence and a name, she never tried to check up on him, that wasn't her place, it was enough for her that he was Mr Terry Armstrong or Armstrong Sahib just as my father was Mr Newton or Newton Sahib and I was Miss Clare, the child of the house, it didn't matter to her what else we were or even if we were anything else. The secret affair between my mother and Terry Armstrong lasted about as long as ours has to date, a year and a half, and although it took my father a while, it seems that nonetheless he did find out about it some time before it ended, and that he tolerated it, put up with it, perhaps in the hope that he'd be transferred somewhere else, or that Armstrong would, assuming he belonged to the diplomatic corps or worked for a company; diplomats don't stay anywhere long, nor do foreigners with no established marital links, just as you won't be staying here much longer. Any burden is easier to bear if it's only intermittently there, and who knows, if Terry Armstrong came and went, if he was hundreds of miles away and only travelled them when he could, then perhaps the situation was not so very unbearable for my father and he was prepared to wait, as perhaps Ted, if he's suspected anything during all this time, is waiting now for you to go. Perhaps I'm waiting too. I don't know. I long ago gave up trying to find out anything through my father, I tormented him quite enough at the time, and he must have felt pretty humiliated if what Hilla said is true. And it must be true." "What else did your nanny tell you?" I asked from my post by the window (the inland-facing window); but more than anything I was turning the name of Terry Armstrong round and round in my mind, although still
not daring to think beyond that, beyond the mere name. "Terry Armstrong," I thought again. Names tell you a lot. "My nanny said my mother became pregnant," Clare replied, "and that she thought the new baby would be Armstrong's, although she wasn't sure, or perhaps she was but didn't want to be. Whatever it was, that false or genuine doubt
was
more than my father could bear or tolerate. I do know that my father was aware of her doubts because Hilla heard snatches of what must have been their last conversation. Their last argument." Clare turned round and changed her position: her feet on the pillow now, her chin resting on her hands, both elbows at the foot of the bed. Now what I could see were the backs of her thighs and the curve, covered by her tights, where her buttocks began. And I thought: "You're only that relaxed about revealing so much when you trust the person watching, when it's a brother, or a husband, when it's a family member. I'm not her husband or her brother, but her foreign lover who's about to become her ex-lover. But tonight she's entrusting me with a family secret." "One night, when I was about three years old, when I'd already been asleep for hours and Hilla had only gone to bed some minutes before, she heard me crying. She got up and came to me as she had on other nights, to calm me and console me and sing me a song to lull me back to sleep, and that was when she heard what must have been the real reason for my waking up and for my tears: my parents had just got back and from their bedroom, close to mine, came shouts and now and then the sound of something being hit, of a blow on the floor or on a table. Frightened, my nanny immediately started to sing in order to drown out the shouting and to overcome her own fear, and it was her singing combined with my sobs that prevented her from hearing the conversation, although there were times when the voices grew so loud, that they startled her again, so that she stopped singing and, without wanting to, overheard the odd phrase. Just a few phrases, eight in all, four isolated pairs of phrases, which, on
my insistence, she repeated to me so many times that now it's as if I myself remembered them. For I must have heard them too, though I can't possibly recall them. I can barely remember my mother. Nevertheless, I do remember those phrases that at first I wrote down until, effortlessly, they became part of my memory and have stayed with me ever since, and I know that one of the things Hilla told me my mother said that night was: 'But I'm not sure, Tom, it could be yours.' And I know what my father replied: 'The fact that you're not sure means that it can't and won't be mine.' And I know that later my mother said: 'I don't know what I want, I wish I did, I'm worn out with not knowing.' And my father replied: 'And I'm worn out with knowing what I do want and not being able to get it.' My mother's third sentence was this: 'If that's what you want, I'll leave tomorrow, but I'll take the girl with me.' And my father said: 'You're in no position to take any more with you than the clothes you stand up in and what you're carrying inside you, and you'll probably never see Clare again.' And later the nanny heard the last thing my mother said: 'I can't take any more of this, Tom.' And my father replied: 'Neither can I.' Hilla sang me back to sleep, more and more softly as the voices quietened, and when I'd gone back to sleep and the voices had fallen silent, my nanny told me that the door of my room opened and she saw the figure of my father silhouetted there. He didn't come in. 'Has the child gone back to sleep?' he asked. The nanny looked at him and raised a finger to her lips, and my father, lowering his voice, added: 'Mrs Newton is leaving very early tomorrow morning to go on a journey. It's best the child doesn't see her go. Take her to sleep in your room for the night.' The door closed again and then the nanny, very carefully, in the dark, without waking me, obeyed his orders and gathered me up in her arms and carried me to her room to spend the rest of the night with her. She gave up her bed to me and, still watchful, went to sleep in a chair." Clare fell silent, paused. She got up
from the double bed that she alone occupied and went to the bathroom, and although we were in an intimate situation we were not so intimate that she left the bathroom door open. Even so I couldn't help hearing the fall of liquid on liquid and while I did so (without wanting to), I thought about that name again: "Terry Armstrong," I thought, letting my thoughts go further this time. "Armstrong's a very common name, so is Terry. For women it's the diminutive form of Theresa and for men of Terence. But Armstrong's very common, there are thousands of them in England and always have been, as many as or more than there are Newtons and almost as many as there are Blakes, although the double-barrelled form, Cromer-Blake is rare. And Terence or Terry are equally common, although not as common as John or Tom or Ted (short for both Edward and Theodore). But Armstrong," I thought. "A strong arm." And when Clare came back, she sat down on the bed, put a folded pillow in the small of her back and leaned against the wall. She lit another cigarette and tucked her legs under her so that her skirt rode up again. She'd splashed her face with water and though her gaze was less fixed, she hadn't lost the thread of her story. "The next morning my mother was no longer in the house, they said she'd gone away for a few days. I still had my nanny Hilla and she stayed at my side from that day on during the several years we remained in Delhi, without a transfer, despite what had happened. She had no way of re-establishing contact with my mother nor of course with Terry Armstrong, whose whereabouts she had no way of knowing. Moreover, during those first few days, my father kept a discreet watch on her, obliging her to remain at home with me all the time, not leaving me for an instant, and that's how it was from then on, she just stayed with me all the time, never leaving my side, until years later, when we at last left Delhi, she chose not to come with us. Hilla never found out what happened to my mother during that time, but one imagines that she went to Armstrong and hid with him
in some hotel or in the house of someone he knew in Delhi, some Indian, certainly no one from the British colony, she would have had a difficult time explaining her situation to them. My mother's pregnancy was already becoming noticeable, Hilla said, in a certain blurring of the features, a bulkiness about her figure, perhaps that's why she had to talk to my father, to tell him about it, on that night that ended with her departure. My nanny didn't even know if Armstrong was in the city when my mother left the house, if he was there that night and was waiting for her somewhere the next day or if he came to her later, as soon as he could after she'd called him, which would mean that at first my mother must have been completely alone. My nanny said Armstrong never struck her as a practical or resourceful man, more of a dreamer, that's how she described him, a dreamer, that's the word she used. What she remembered most about him was his unfailing good humour, his continual joking. She told how, often, he'd take a metal flask out of his pocket and, amidst much laughter, hold it to my mother's lips, even to Hilla's, but both always declined, laughing, and then he'd hold the flask high and spout on about something or other, toasting to English names that meant nothing to my nanny and drink long and cheerfully, although she never saw him drunk. My mother was always laughing, she laughed at everything he said or did, the way young people do, the way Armstrong did: he was always joking, Hilla said, that was what she remembered him for, his endless laughter." And while Clare spoke of the man of whom she knew nothing except his name and that one character trait, I changed position at last and left the window to go and sit on the floor at the foot of the bed in order to listen better and think less. But I still listened to my thoughts, which were in fact urgent and succinct, for all I could think of (as I approached the bed and noticed the sand in my socks and at the foot of the bed) was a name: 'Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong." "Four days after the argument, we saw him, Terry Armstrong
that is. We all saw him, Hilla, me and possibly even my father, although he's never admitted he did and I can't remember it at all, just as I can't remember what it was they said that woke me up and made me cry on that other night. Or perhaps for a long time I forgot what I'd seen and only much later, when I was told about it and was told that I'd seen it, did I regain a kind of memory of what, according to Hilla, I too saw with my own eyes. The likelihood is that if I'm telling it now as if I remembered it, it's only because now I know about it and have spent the years since imagining it. But, you see, I can't avoid knowing what I saw, and although I may not have understood it then nor am I able to remember it with my memory, I
think
I remember it now with my mind." And while Clare Bayes, who was once Clare Newton, talked to me about her knowledge or memory of the first Clare Newton, who must have had another name before, unknown to me (that is, while the child Clare talked to me about her dead mother), I continued to think about the name of Armstrong and this time I thought (at the same time as I heard the story of that melodramatic episode from the lips of one of the witnesses): "It can't be, it wouldn't be, it isn't, Armstrong's such a common name, so's Terry, there must be thousands of Terrys and thousands of Armstrongs and hundreds of Terry Armstrongs, and anyway there's no way of proving it because no one knows anything about the Terry Armstrong who left no trace after returning to Calcutta in the 1950s as he returned to Vasto at the end of his life; perhaps he went back to Calcutta for 'one last drunken binge' that got too complicated for him and that held him there and lasted a year and a half (it was more than a drunken binge) and took him to Delhi; 'a final drunken binge', even though it took place fifteen years before his actual death." "Only four days had passed and I was in the garden with my nanny, watching the river and waiting for the last trains of the late evening to pass; as I've told you before, that was something I did ever since I was a little girl and continued to do until we left Delhi. My father was standing at the other end of the garden, near the house, and that's why while it's possible that he saw everything, it's equally possible that he saw nothing. But I did see what I know I saw but don't remember, what I didn't remember later nor even at the time, not even immediately after it happened, because that night, four nights after my mother's departure, while I was waiting for the mail train that came from Moradabad and always arrived so late, two figures appeared, a woman and a man, walking along the iron bridge that spans the river." "The bridge over the River Yamuna or Jumna that Clare has described to me before," I thought. "The long bridge of crisscrossing iron girders, deserted for the most part, in darkness, idle and shadow)', exactly like one of those faithful but ancillary figures from our childhood who grow dim then blaze into life again later, just for a moment, when they are called, only to be instantly plunged back into the gloom of their obscure, commutable existences, having done their brief duty or revealed the secret suddenly demanded of them. Just like Hilla or the old maidservant who used to accompany me and my three brothers along calle de Génova, calle de Covarrubias, or calle de Miguel Ángel: the Indian nanny Hilla and the old Madrid maidservant, whose lives are commutable and exist only in order that through them, whenever necessary, the child may once more emerge." And while Clare was telling me what she'd seen but remembered now only with her mind, I thought it all myself from my position at the foot of the bed, looking at the front view of her strong, slender legs that offered a glimpse of her knickers: "The English girl is looking at the black iron bridge waiting for the train to cross it, to see the train lit up and reflected in the water, one of the brightly coloured trains full of light and distant noise, that from time to time cross the River Yamuna, the River Jumna that she looks patiently out at from her house high up above when night falls. But the train has not yet appeared and, instead, along the dark bridge two