The Realms of Gold (26 page)

She rocked backwards and forwards on the white rug in the candle-light, and thought about all this.

Sometimes she had even woken the baby on purpose, as a shield, as a protector. One can't make love (if that is what one could call it) in front of a baby, or not in Tockley, anyway. One may in the Isles of the Pacific, or in Italy, or in the East End, or in Hampstead or Kensington, but not in Tockley.

Something had gone very wrong somewhere. She recognized that. She did tend to think of herself as a norm and to see the world in her own image, finding enough evidence in Tockley at least to support her view, but she could tell that the rest of the world wasn't really like herself. The whole thing had been designed for some different end. Sex and babies had certainly not been intended by nature to be conflicting trials of interest, had they? Wasn't one meant to enjoy sex rather than grit one's teeth and bear it? She didn't even really like thinking about these things, but she had to; one of the most painful things about her present way of life (as a married woman) was that she had to think about it constantly, indeed she could never forget it, except on those rare and blessed occasions when Mark was away on business. Some people certainly enjoyed sex; literature and films on television and such like were full of their enjoyment. And if there
was
something real, why was she forever shut out from it, and forced to live in this horrible horrible mockery? What had she done wrong? What had been her mistake?

Somewhere in the back of her mind she had an image of what things ought to be like. It wasn't a very sexy image—sex she genuinely couldn't imagine as being anything other than humiliating—but it involved a mother, a father and a baby, all in some way happy together and united, though they didn't bear much inspection, this happy trio, because the more she tried to visualize them the stronger a resemblance they took on to a Christmas crib with proud parents and babe in the manger, which wasn't the point at all, because Jesus had been produced by a virgin birth; it was yet another proof that she couldn't either want or imagine sex. Perhaps it was simply the Christmas candles that had suggested the image. She tried to remember an article she had read in
Nova
, by a man describing his emotion as he watched his baby daughter being born. It had made her cry. It had moved her so much that she had torn it out and thrown it away because she didn't want Mark to read it.

Things could be better, but not for her. It was a hard truth she held, hard like a nut. It would crack her teeth sooner than reveal its soft kernel for her.

It was time to go upstairs. She couldn't really pretend to be doing anything much for much longer down here. There was one more ashtray she could empty, over there by the corner of the settee. It was the one Ted had been using. She wondered why Ted had been so pleasant to her—was he just feeling sorry for her because she was so stupid and so unable to talk about the gravel pit? She wondered how his marriage with Cynthia was. She could never make Cynthia out—she was brisk, busy, self-assured, outspoken, rather aggressive, she had two children already at school, one at nursery, one at primary, she worked part time in the local hospital in the physiotherapy department and was very good at getting to know important people, she was into everything, she managed and manipulated and gossiped, she made Janet feel feeble and wilting, and she was getting fat. She wasn't, Janet had thought, the kind of person one could ever get to know really well: the nearest they had ever got to an intimate conversation (Janet was good at avoiding these too) had been when Cynthia had told her not to bother with natural childbirth classes, they were a waste of time, and had given her some gruesome hospital statistics about easy births by un-natural mothers and hard births by those who'd been breathing and doing exercises from the first week on. Don't you bother with all that, my girl, Cynthia had said, and Janet, relieved to be spared the embarrassment of doing exercises with a lot of other pregnant women, had followed her advice without noticeable ill-effect; Cynthia came to see her in hospital and had actually been rather cheery and helpful, knowing all the doctors as she did, laughing loudly and making jokes about the nurses, admiring the baby. She was a nononsense person, and had been good for morale, in those circumstances.

But to be married to, well, that was another matter. Ted must know her intimately, if anyone did. It was hard to imagine what they talked about. Ted was a rather quiet person, and Cynthia so noisy.

(Frances, brushing her teeth, was thinking of Karel and Joy. She hoped Joy didn't think she had given Karel up for Joy's sake. She didn't like to be underestimated.

Karel Schmidt, for his part, was thinking about Frances. So she was off to Adra, was she? Unlike Janet, he had read his morning papers thoroughly. Unlike Frances and Janet, he was nowhere near bed. He kept late hours. At the moment, while thinking of Frances, he was ostensibly listening to the drunken ramblings of a colleague whose wife had left him for the third time, and who was threatening suicide if he ever made her go back. They would go on for some time.

David Ollerenshaw was nowhere near bed either. Like Karel, he found himself in the listening role. His friend Banks, rather surprisingly, claimed to have fallen in love with a red-haired seismologist from Canada, who, like Banks, was already married. David listened with interest, over a rapidly emptying bottle of Glenfiddich, to Banks's story: it had had to wait till Mrs Banks went to bed, so the whole of dinner time had been devoted to earthquakes. How extraordinarily unexpected people are, thought David. He had always assumed that the heart of Banks was made of stone. How glad he was that he himself was not involved either with Mrs Banks or with the red-haired seismologist. He opened his second pack of cigarettes, and listened on.)

Janet picked up the ashtray, and stared at the cigarette ends. White crushed cellulose, grey insubstantial ash. She picked up the large green scented Swedish candle at her elbow, idly, to look at it more closely, and some molten wax tipped into the pottery ashtray with its pottery sign of the zodiac. The combination of liquid wax and fag ends and burnt matches was singularly disgusting, but she tipped some more, trying to swamp the fag ends completely, leaving a burning hollow green crater in the wide candle. A friend of Mark's had spent years working for a tobacco company to invent the perfect synthetic cigarette. It seemed a strange way to spend one's life, but a useful one, it could be argued. Mark and Ted rarely spoke of the utility of their projects, they spoke instead of salaries and colleagues and the canteen food. They could not speak to her about such matters, she did not understand plastics, she tried to but she couldn't, and anyway part of her didn't want to. She melted more wax and tipped it into her molten green lake. The translucent deep core of the candle glowed more brightly. Mark, upstairs, slammed a drawer in a threatening manner. Thus did he summon her. There would be no point tonight in trying to read in bed about the Jewish orphan in Poland. She must go up to her appointed, her chosen fate. Why could not Mark be more pleasant to her, if he wanted her to sleep with him?

She would go up when she had completely swamped Ted's cigarette ends and little heap of matches. She melted more wax, she tipped, she melted. She thought about what Anthea had said about the Iron Age. If anyone were to see her now, what would they think she was doing? Would they think she was a witch, would they think her mad, would they think the twentieth century mad? Here she sat, pouring wax on to an ancient symbol, pointlessly. If disinterred as from the ruins of Pompeii, what little rite would it be assumed she had been enacting, what gods would she have been seen to propitiate?

Her cat appeared from nowhere, as she melted the last drops. She sat by her side, fresh from the dry leaves outside, and watched the small flame with narrowed eyes and wide streaked golden irises. All the matches were sunk by now in the slowly hardening dead sea of wax, sunk like spars from some small shipwreck. Janet stared at her work with some satisfaction. And then she heard her husband call ‘Janet' from upstairs, and she shut the little cat into the kitchen, and blew out the green candle, and carried an ordinary white wax candle from the grocer's with her up to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that is enough, for the moment, of Janet Bird. More than enough, you might reasonably think, for her life is slow, even slower than its description, and her dinner party seemed to go on too long to her, as it did to you. Frances Wingate's life moves much faster. (Though it began rather slowly, in these pages—a tactical error, perhaps, and the idea of starting her off in a more manic moment has frequently suggested itself, but the reasons against such an opening are stronger, finally, than the reasons for it.) Because Frances Wingate's life moves faster, it is therefore more entertaining. We will return to it shortly, and will dwell no longer on its depressing aspects. It is depressing to read about depression. Frances Wingate, as you will have noticed, rarely feels depressed for long, anyway, and her opportunities for distraction are varied.

Whereas Janet Bird's best hope of distraction is an evening class.

We will return to Frances with relief: her diseases are meaningless and mild, her prognosis is good, she is a cheering spectacle, and should be given a fair chance. (Whether or not Janet Bird will be allowed a fair chance is another matter, as yet unresolved, and in the resolution, truth, likelihood, and a natural benevolence are at war.) But meanwhile, we must look briefly at David Ollerenshaw, the third of the Ollerenshaws, and I fear much the most impenetrable. I must confess that I had at this point intended to introduce him in greater depth: indeed, I had a fine leap, from Janet staring at the small crater in her melted wax candle, to David staring into the crater of a small volcano. It would have been an arbitrary link, but I liked it, and am sorry that I have messed it up by this perhaps unnecessary fit of explanation. The truth is that David was intended to play a much larger role in this narrative, but the more I looked at him, the more incomprehensible he became, and I simply have not the nerve to present what I saw in him in the detail I had intended. On the other hand, he continues to exist, he has a significance that might one day become clear, and meanwhile he will have to speak, as it were, for himself.

So: here is David Ollerenshaw, staring into the depths of a small and rather dull volcano. Banks had told him to have a look at it, but Banks must have been biased in its favour. It is a week after the long dull dinner party of Mark and Janet Bird, and David is well on his way to Adra, unlike Frances Wingate, who is still messing about in Putney wondering whether to take her black dress or her brown dress. You will remember (or, in other words, I fear you may have forgotten) that he has seen Frances Wingate once, at her lecture in the opening pages of this book, and is looking forward to meeting her again.

He has already crossed Europe: the next morning, he is to embark for Africa, with his new green Peugeot, which waits for him at the foot of the volcano, with a docile and hopeful air, like a well-trained but spirited horse. So far, he is enjoying himself, though the best is yet to come: the best, in terms of the solitude of the desert, and after that the highly transitory and therefore acceptable life of the conference. Once in a while he enjoys meeting his colleagues, and members of allied professions.

Let us, without more ado, move him into a different focus, and into the past tense.

Banks had told him the volcano was of interest, but perhaps he had been too absent-minded to concentrate on what he was saying, seduced inwardly by thoughts of the red-haired seismologist. It rumbled, heaved and spat, then sank back again like an old man into its ashen bed. Disappointing. David remembered the one in Iceland, which had truly merited a visit. It had been spectacular.

David liked the idea that nature could and would do worse than man, if it wanted, and that it was just biding its time: he liked to think of the earth as a living beast, blazing internally, waiting to revenge itself on insults, but it seemed to be getting old and docile, pitifully easy to tease. One stuck tubes into its guts and syphoned off oil: one blasted out quarries and mined and burrowed: one could even provoke artificial earthquakes, these days. And the old creature didn't seem to mind. It just twitched, occasionally, and a few hundred people died, but then it fell back into its senile torpor. David Ollerenshaw would have liked a large cataclysm, rather than this gritty bubbling at his feet.

He had always been fond of the more dramatic, dynamic and dangerous manifestations of nature, a fondness that had led him to related activities, such as pot-holing, rock-climbing, mountain-climbing. He wasn't quite sure what he was after—death, his more prudent colleagues had sometimes suggested—but he pursued it with some perseverence. His pursuit had taken him to some strange landscapes, and some strange extremes of heat and cold—the Falkland Islands, the Solomon Islands, Alaska, Australia, Adra. The last of these, his present destination, had proved rather dull in some ways: mostly flat, hot, dry, under-populated. But in other ways, it had for him, as for Frances Wingate, been a scene of discovery, for up in the North, in the uninhabited part, on a government survey last year, he and his team had discovered a valley of tin.