A Pure Clear Light (20 page)
There had been the woman’s apparent awareness of her furtive glances—which had consequently ceased; and at last there had been the worst thing of all, when, as she was leaving—casting one last almost involuntary glance in their direction—she had caught, very briefly, Simon’s eye in the mirror opposite which he was sitting.
She had looked away instantly, pretending utter obliviousness— acting the complete and disinterested stranger—and, having paid her bill, had sailed out of the brasserie, her back as straight as a rod, her head held high, sublimely, apparently, unaware; but trembling with shock, and even fright, her heart thumping, her mind in a daze. God, oh God, she was saying to herself; oh, God. She was still saying this, dazedly looking through the window, as her taxi bore her down Park Lane, the Friday night traffic loud and frantic all around her, the park a lake of black silence in the distance beyond.
‘And who,
exactly
, is Lydia Faraday?’
Simon was still quite pale with dismay. To have been seen— bad; but to have seen himself being seen—vile. An eventuality so dreadful that its import must be denied.
‘She’s no one, absolutely no one.’
‘Come now.’
‘No, truly. She’s just a person Flora—just someone Flora knew at Cambridge. She’s no one.’
‘All the same.’
He took her hand again. ‘All the same, nothing. I mean, she won’t say anything, or—anything.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’
The thing was, Gillian seemed quite calm now. She leaned back and lit a cigarette; she was looking at him quite coolly; he could even have said that she did not entirely (or at all) believe him; that she was interrogating him. ‘Of course I am,’ he said impatiently. ‘I tell you, she’s no one. In any case, what did she see? Nothing.’
‘She saw us.’
‘What of it?’
‘Don’t you wonder what we looked like to her, sitting here?’
Simon was silent. His head was still swimming; he couldn’t think straight.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Gillian, very slowly, ‘that we’ve had it, my dear.’
It was too dreadful to be credible. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Simon.
‘You really don’t quite understand, do you?’
‘Understand
what
?’
‘What this really
means.
To have been seen, like this.’
‘As I keep saying, she saw nothing. I’ll fix her. Of course it’s an awful drag, but I’ll fix her.’
‘You mean you’ll tell her some plausible story.’
‘Nothing to it.’
‘You really
don
’
t
see, do you?’
‘See
what
?’
‘That having to tell
some plausible story
is as bad as bad can get. You know, never apologise, never explain—once you start doing either, it’s all up. I’m sorry. But it really is.’
And now at last he saw, hidden behind her apparent calm, beyond her relentless questions, the shock from which she too was suffering. He was appalled. ‘Let’s for God’s sake get out of here,’ he muttered; and they went back to her house, both silent and terrified of the pass they had reached. Here it finally is, Simon thought, as they walked down the early-evening lamplit street: here is the abyss. ‘Cold tonight, isn’t it?’ he said pointlessly. Inside the house they clung to each other and made love passionately, but it was no good; it really was no good; they both knew this, but it had become unthinkable that either should say so. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll fix old Lydia.’
‘Yes,’ Gillian said wearily. ‘No.’
Dazed, trembling, still—here now she was. Quickly, out on the pavement—pay the cabbie—go inside: never mind anything—grab a drink. Not the inferior Chablis foreseen by Simon, but a reliable South Australian Riesling. Well, naturally.
Here were all the usual liggers, all merrily talking their heads off, God bless them. She heard her mother’s voice in her ear, six years old, felt the maternal hand on her back: ‘You’re
on
, darling’; she felt the heat of the sudden bright lights after the nervous darkness of the wings. She was on, another bit-player, with all the self-consciousness of a star. She drank another mouthful of wine. The shock was subsiding and a light-headed febrility was beginning to take its place.
If only she hadn’t caught Simon’s eye—if only that. But if only she hadn’t, she wouldn’t, as she now did,
know.
And what she
knew
was too dreadful to contain. Here she was, nonetheless, containing it—so she supposed. Simon’s guilty glance: Simon’s found-out glance. Oh, Simon. Not simply wicked (if you wanted to be old-fashioned) but careless. Another mouthful, before she did her stuff here, and—oh, God. There was Flora.
‘Flora!’
‘We were afraid you weren’t coming!’
‘And Janey too! How nice.’
‘Simon couldn’t come, so I thought—’ ‘Yes,
what
a good idea. Have you looked at the paintings yet? What do you think, Janey? Are they any good?’
‘You can’t see them properly, there are too many people in the way.’
‘How true. Oh, there’s Claire. See over there, talking to Will Feather.’
‘Yes, we know—she ditched us for Mr Feather.’
‘Well, Claire has her row to hoe. That reminds me, I should hoe my own, I must pay my respects to the artist. I wonder which he is.’ Lydia looked around at all the English faces; it was hopeless.
‘I think that’s him over there,’ said Janey. Lydia looked: Janey was probably right.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said. It was indeed he: as she came closer she heard the quacking of antipodean vowels. She waited for a break and introduced herself. ‘How nice to meet you at last,’ she said. She was two glasses of wine down; was she overdoing it?
‘Gidday,’ said the antipodean amiably, ‘likewise.’
‘Well—’ said Lydia, ‘they’ve certainly got a crowd in tonight. Everyone’s here.’
‘Yeah, it’s beaut!’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance yet to see the paintings properly—so many people in the way.’
‘No worries; they’ll be up for two more weeks.’
‘Yes, I must come back during the day.’
‘You do that.’
‘Yes. Anyway, I do hope you’re enjoying London—but then I dare say you’ve been here before.’
‘Oh yeah, I have; it’s bonzer.’
‘Oh good.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been havin’ a beaut time.’
‘Oh, beaut. Oh, sorry—I mean—’ ‘No worries!’
‘Oh good. Anyway—where are you staying exactly?’
‘Oh, I’ve got a loan of a triffic flat in Notting Hill.’
‘Oh yes, Notting Hill.’
‘Yeah that’s right—beaut place.’
‘So you know lots of people here, do you?’
‘Oh, well, I know a few. I’ve met some more here. They’re bonzer people.’
‘Oh, are they?’
‘Yeah, right; triffic!’
‘Well, some friends of mine are here tonight who’d love to meet you—Claire Maclise, just over there—you see—’
‘Oh yeah, I’ve met her already; she’s beaut.’
‘Yes, I’m sure she’d adore to know you’d said that, I must tell her—’
‘You beauty.’
‘And then there’s darling Flora, just over there, Flora Beaufort—see, with the
jeune fille en fleur
, well, almost—’
‘Oh yeah I noticed her. Bonzer, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she is; as a matter of fact she’s rather clever, too, you know; she’s at St Paul’s.’
‘Oh yeah? That’s triffic.’
‘Yes, it is actually. Anyway, come and meet her, and Flora too.’
‘Righty-oh; that’ll be beaut!’
‘Where were you?’
‘Honestly, Simon. At that private view, remember?’
‘For God’s sake.’
‘Did you pay the babysitter?’
‘Yes of course I did.’
‘Good. Well, let’s have some stew. Could you light the gas under it, Janey? Not too high. You haven’t eaten yet have you, Simon?’
‘No, I was waiting for you.’
‘How sweet.’
‘Well, did you enjoy yourselves?’
‘Yes, it was
beaut.
’
Flora and Janey both started to laugh. Simon looked from one to the other. They tried to explain the joke but he didn’t seem to appreciate it. ‘Honestly,’ said Flora, ‘he was just so funny. It was ages before we cottoned on that he was putting it all on. Well, quite a lot. Playing the Australian card. Really funny. What a shame you couldn’t come. It really was bonzer.’ Flora put the casserole of stew on the table, and they sat down to eat. ‘He thinks Janey’s beaut, too,’ she went on. ‘He said, that’s a real beaut little girl you’ve got there, Flora.’
‘How much did you have to drink?’ said Simon.
‘Oh, listen to you,’ said Flora.
Knives were turning constantly in Simon’s stomach. He did not see how life was to be endured. He suddenly realised that he was going to go and see Lydia: he was going to fix Lydia, somehow. He must go and see her first thing tomorrow. It was the only landing he could make, as he fell, farther and farther, into the nightmare. The knives turned more slowly, then were still. Oh, but the agony.
‘Lydia was looking nice, didn’t you think, Janey?’
‘She looked okay,’ said Janey. ‘Not real beaut, but okay.’
‘She looked
beaut
,’ said Flora firmly, and they laughed again. Simon could have shouted at them; he ate some more stew. ‘She was wearing a rather beaut hat,’ said Flora. ‘She got it in the Harrods sale. It’s French.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Simon. ‘Beaut.’
‘No, but you know,’ said Flora, ‘talking of hat faces, I know she isn’t beautiful, but she has got a hat face, Lydia has. She can wear a hat.’
‘Good-oh,’ said Simon.
‘Anyway, it was all a lot of fun,’ said Flora. ‘You should have come.’
‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘It serves me right.’
‘There you go,’ said Flora.
‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I do that.’ And he found that the knives had started, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, to turn again in his stomach. The pain was just unspeakable.
Flora stretched. ‘Let’s watch a funny film,’ she said. ‘I feel like laughing.’ And she smiled happily at Simon, who, while he could have wept, smiled, nay grinned, heroically back.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
‘I suppose you know why I’ve come here.’
‘Yes; I should think I probably do.’ Lydia stood quite still, her arms folded, and looked at Simon’s drawn face, and waited. Simon shrugged slightly, and looked down at the floor. He was helpless. What, now, to say? What, in God’s name, to say?
‘This room looks different from the last time I was here.’ Didn’t it, though. And yet, there was something—one thing—that was jarringly familiar: why?
The walls were all painted a sort of greyish-lilac, with cream woodwork, and the floor was covered with some sort of seagrass matting. Cream calico curtains, hanging to the floor; a deck-chair with a white canvas seat; a glass coffee table—its legs seemed to be made of glass, too: they must be perspex. A sort of luxurious austerity, summed up exactly by the long leather and chrome sofa. Simon felt almost faint: the world had turned suddenly backwards on its axis. ‘New sofa, isn’t it?’ he said. A sort of terror had seized him.
Lydia looked over at the sofa and smiled faintly. ‘Oh yes, that,’ she said. ‘Handsome, isn’t it? Got it in an auction sale. There were actually two, but I thought one ought to be enough.’
‘Absolutely.’ Of all uncanny connections. It was intolerable. His head was swimming.
Lydia made a gesture. ‘Well, do sit down,’ she said. ‘It’s entirely functional.’
Simon, very slowly, sat. If he were to lift the cushions, he thought, he would be quite sure to find at least one of Solomon’s hairs. Lydia took pity at last.
‘Coffee?’ she said; she went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle.
When the coffee was served she sat down on the deck-chair and lit a cigarette. ‘Well,’ she said.
Simon had not rehearsed what he should say. The only way, last night, all night, this morning, to still those turning knives had been to assure himself that he really could fix Lydia. That he—they— could in some way return to the
status quo ante.
What, after all, had she seen?
‘Odd that you should have run into us last night, at that place.’
‘Not really. I’m quite often in the neighbourhood.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I suppose if you had, I mightn’t have run into you.’
‘Possibly not.’
‘One can’t be too careful.’
He said nothing.
‘As it is…’
‘You probably want an explanation.’
‘I’m not entirely sure that I do. Everything seems fairly clear, doesn’t it?’
‘Everything?’
‘Well, there you were, with another woman, with whom you are evidently on terms of some intimacy—’ ‘You’re quite sure about that, are you?’
‘More or less.’
‘It wouldn’t do to be too hasty.’
‘No, that’s what I told myself, too, at one stage. At first, of course, I was entirely sure.’ She wouldn’t bother, she thought, to tell him about her earlier sighting. ‘But after the shock—as it were— wore off, and after I’d been back in the world—so to speak—for a few hours, I began to wonder. As one does. I did see that there might be an alternative reading.’
‘Or even several such.’
‘One is enough.’
‘True. There we are then. I wouldn’t like to think you’d gone off with the wrong impression.’
‘Then you’d better make quite sure I’ve got the right one.’
‘You imply that I actually owe it to you.’
‘You implied as much yourself by coming here.’
There was a silence; Simon drank some coffee. Lydia looked at her watch. ‘I haven’t very much more time,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve got to meet this painter chap at the Tate. He wants to show me the Wattses.’
‘The Wattses,’ Simon repeated stupidly.
‘Yes, you know.
Hope
, and so on. He says Watts is the coming man.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Still coming though. Vastly underrated, this chap says. Very important painter. Coming like no one’s business.’
‘I’ll drop you off.’
‘Ah. Should I accept?’
‘Think about it,’ said Simon drily. ‘In the meantime—’ ‘You still have a problem.’
‘Have I?’
‘In as much as I may still be labouring under a misconception.’
‘No,’ said Simon. ‘I’m quite happy, as long as you see that you may be. As long as we’re clear that nothing, after all, is clear.’
