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Authors: Salley Vickers

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THE HAWTHORN MADONNA

Every Easter, Elspeth and Ewan stayed in a cottage loaned them by Mrs Stroud, who had been a school friend of Ewan's Aunt Val. Not that the two old ladies ever saw much of each other in their latter days. Still, it was recognisably Edie Stroud in Aunt Val's photo album – the girl with the almost coal-black hair, very bobbed – unless that was Mary Squires, after all, who died of tuberculosis after her fiancé shot himself. When Mrs Stroud herself died, the cottage passed to her nephew who worked in Amsterdam – something to do with diamonds, someone had said, though that might have been wishful thinking. He was glad enough to let it without trouble to a couple who did not mind that there was a greenish fungus around the window frames and that you had to hang the bedding before the fire to air each night before you went to sleep. Indeed, they would have missed the nightly ritual, Elspeth and Ewan, if Mrs Stroud's nephew had done what his aunt had always been saying she would do and have a proper damp course laid down.

Luckily, Mrs Stroud herself was now laid down instead and the fingers of moisture were allowed to settle inside the glass of the windows unhindered and make little feathery rivulets down the pane and emanate out into the general air of the place.

Elspeth and Ewan had never had any children. In the early days when they went to ‘Brow' they had gone with the plan of serious lovemaking. But as anyone who has ever tried it knows ‘serious' lovemaking is not the most successful kind. When it became clear that for one reason or another (they never tried too hard to discover which) they were not going to have children they tacitly dropped such plans. This did not mean that they were not affectionate with each other. People often said of them that they were an exceptionally warm couple – really, it did you good to be with them. In bed at night they held each other close even years after the lovemaking had been dropped altogether, except for birthdays and Christmas. But it was Easter when they always went to ‘Brow' which seemed not quite to qualify …

This Easter was particularly cold, though Elspeth said that all Easters were cold these days and it must be to do with climate change. She believed that something had happened to the calendar since they were young. Not at all, Ewan said. The Met Office had produced statistics which demonstrated that the weather had been much the same, give or take the odd fluctuation, for the past two hundred years. That was just like men, Elspeth had retorted, to dismiss everything the scientists tell us if it didn't suit their prejudices. They were driving, as usual, down the M3 and off the A303 past Stonehenge and into the heart of Somerset, if such a promiscuous county could be said to have a ‘heart'.

The cottage was called ‘Brow' because it stood on the brow of a low hill – hardly a hill at all, really, more a kind of hump. It stood alone at the end of a lane, which fortunately had never been surfaced and therefore discouraged picnickers.

Elspeth unpacked the box of groceries she had brought from London to save having to go too often to Brack, the nearest village, or to Wells for decent wine. Ewan went at once to inspect the woodshed. Yes, plenty of sawn logs stacked – so Tim, the young man who seemed always to be smoking joints but who for all that kept the hedges neatly clipped, had done his stuff. And there were enough candles too for when the electricity tripped off. All in order, then. And it never took long to heat up the tank for a bath.

It was still cold the next day when they went for one of the walks which over the years they had taken possession of – behind the hill and along the track through the plantation, towards Wells. You could just see the twin honey-coloured cathedral towers in the distance below them. ‘Shall we go to Wells tomorrow?' Elspeth asked. ‘Tomorrow' was Good Friday. But in the end they decided not – it wasn't a big thing with them, church at Easter – just that Elspeth liked the pageantry.

‘It's going to snow,' Ewan remarked as he opened the wine for supper. They were to have
boeuf en daube
, brought all the way from Highgate in a casserole. Years ago Elspeth had learned the recipe from reading
To the Lighthouse
but these days she never imagined herself as Mrs Ramsey.

‘“Nudity banned until this appears in hedges” – eight letters?' Ewan asked later by the fire. Although Elspeth had quite a different cast of mind, and never got crossword clues, for twenty years he had persevered in asking her advice.

‘Hawthorn,' she said, proving that it is right never to stop trying.

‘Why so?'

‘“Ne'er cast a clout till may be out.” People think it's the month, but in fact it's the may flower. Don't you remember? I've told you that millions of times!' But a mind that grasps crosswords will usually be too reasonable for rhymes or folklore.

Perhaps it was the extreme temperature but by Saturday Ewan had contracted a cold. They ate toasted hot-cross buns by the fire and he went to bed early. Elspeth wished they had packed whisky and Ewan wished she wouldn't fuss.

‘It's not “fussing” to want you to have a good time!'

‘I'll be right as rain tomorrow,' Ewan said.

But he wasn't. Elspeth was aware that his night had been restless. Years of sleeping alongside her husband's tall frame had attuned her own to his. When he slept badly so did she – one of the penalties of a successful partnership. By morning he was coughing alarmingly and even – more alarming – agreed to stay in bed.

There is only so much attention you can give a reluctant invalid. By afternoon Ewan shooed Elspeth out for a walk. ‘But where shall I go? I don't want to do one of ours without you.' Ewan thought this daft but Elspeth, who could be stubborn, had her own rules. Well, she would strike out, find somewhere new, then when he was better they could explore it together, add it to the others they had made their own over the years.

Although the walks Elspeth liked best started from the cottage door, there was no chance she could discover new territory that way – it was all too well tried. So it would have to be a car trip, which would give her a chance to buy whisky – she felt that the least she could do for Ewan was provide that. Wells had a Majestic. She would go that way and then on towards Glastonbury, never mind the old hippies.

With a bottle of Glenfiddich in the back of the car, Elspeth felt more entitled to her outing. But even then she wasn't about to abandon her husband altogether. She would keep him with her by doing what she and Ewan had done when they had first met – drive where fancy took you, then take every left turn until you found the place you were looking for; it always worked in the end.

Elspeth drove by instinct, following roads she had never travelled until all she knew was that she had come some way from Wells. But wasn't Somerset a strange county? Even such a short distance from where she had started the snow was quite deep, lining the hedges with precarious spines of powdery white. The white gave her a chill feeling. She half wished she had packed a thermos flask. There, she hoped she was not becoming one of those people who forever wished they had done things differently! She had the whisky, after all. Left, left, left again – it was funny, when you thought about it, that you so rarely came back on yourself – left here, and here and here – now stop.

She had fetched up in a dead-end – not so much a dead-end because there remained ahead a track which a lighter vehicle could traverse but not the Volvo. Plenty of room for a person though.

Elspeth stepped out of the car pulling on her fleece-lined anorak. Would she take the whisky just for the fun of a nip? No, it was for Ewan; unsealed it was not so much of a present. Lucky she had brought her boots.

The snow was melting into the mud as Elspeth walked along the lane. On either side the hedges grew high, covered in wild clematis and the fine, light dusting of particles of snow which gave the wrong seasonal feel: it was Easter not Christmas. Although still early afternoon the light had begun to fail – or perhaps more snow was gathering, blocking out the weak sun. Now there was a wooden gate ahead, its mossy slats slightly out of true – and just beyond Elspeth made out a small stone building with a cross aloft. A chapel.

Despite her expectations, the door of the chapel yielded quite naturally and Elspeth stepped inside. A sweetish, musky smell greeted her – not altogether disagreeable, but not wholly pleasant either.

‘You can put the lights on if you like.'

The voice, neither low nor loud, was pitched from somewhere in the shadowy back part of the chapel – what in a church is called the apse.

‘I'm sorry?' She wasn't alarmed yet.

‘No need to be! The switch is on your left, just shoulder height.'

The chapel lit up to reveal a man seated on a bench at the wall farthest from the altar, on which were arranged thorny branches of green and flowering white. To the left there stood a slight wooden statue.

‘See there, the Hawthorn Madonna,' said the man. ‘We're proud of her here.' Although, since he was sitting down, it was hard to be sure, he appeared of medium height – quite ordinary, in fact.

‘It looks old,' said Elspeth, trying to be polite.

But at this the man merely laughed – a brusque barking sound, like some large, indifferent seabird. ‘You can touch her if you like.'

‘Surely not!' A touch of reproof – Elspeth was only mildly religious but she knew what was to be respected.

‘Why not? You won't hurt her. ‘Sides, she's meant to be touched at Eastertide.'

Some local rite or ritual, Elspeth thought.

She walked forward, setting her boots down carefully on the flags. The figure was made of a knotty dark wood, with a natural-looking twist in it which greatly added to the feeling of something limber and flowing.

‘Does she have a baby?' Elspeth did not know why she had asked this – nor even that she was going to ask it until the words flew, with a life of their own, from her lips. Once out, they seemed to hang in the air, with the breath which was making icy clouds before her face.

‘Is it a baby you want, then?'

‘Oh, yes!'

Once more, the words were out before she knew it but she had no thoughts of taking them back. After all, it was what had lain behind all her other thoughts, during the nights when she didn't sleep; maybe even more the ones she did.

‘Touch her then and ask.'

It was odd how she didn't mind that he mentioned it – the subject she and Ewan had put away for good between them. But Ewan was at home, sick, and here she was in an unknown place – with a stranger …

Ewan said later that it was the whisky that had done it. ‘She got me into bed, got me tight and raped me!' he used to say, and Elspeth would blush a little, perhaps because she didn't like the word ‘rape' to be used of anything to do with Jack. On the other hand, she didn't want to take from Ewan his pride in their son – or her husband's part in creating him.

Jack was born, slightly premature, late on Christmas Day. But of course, Easter was early that year – and the may flowers were not out for a good few weeks after.

APHRODITE'S HAT

‘Why is she wearing a hat?' I asked. We were in the National Gallery at the time and looking at a painting by Cranach the Elder of Aphrodite and her son, Eros. He has been stung by a bee and they both are stark naked except that the Goddess of Love seems to be sporting a splendid hat, broad and flat and trimmed with feathers and set slantwise on her coquettish head. I could tell James was thinking about something else and didn't take in my question. It was rhetorical anyway; posed for myself, for some future enquiry.

James and I met occasionally at the National Gallery. It was close to where we both worked and we had long ago decided that it was safe to be together in a public place. We both had spouses, neither of whom worked in town. And there was no one likely to meet us there who knew us, though you can never tell. But these days it is not, in any case, uncommon for a man and a woman, who are friends, to meet in a lunch break. Nevertheless, there are pitfalls in conducting a love affair, even one as well organised as ours.

James and I had first met years ago at university. We had gone out together and then ‘slept' together (which is what we called it then) in a rather fumbling incompetent way, with not much actual sleep but not unpleasant either. Then, for reasons neither of us could remember, we drifted apart.

There are few things more mysterious than endings. I mean, for example, when did the Greek gods end, exactly? Was there a day when Zeus waved magisterially down from Olympus and Aphrodite and her lover Ares, and her crippled husband Hephaestus (I always felt sorry for him), and all the rest got rolled up like a worn-out carpet? But with me and James it turned out not to have been an ‘end' after all.

After we both left university, I married Pete, a research chemist, and James married Diane, who became a solicitor. It was pure chance (though is chance ever quite ‘pure', I wonder?) that we all met years later at a party, quite an ordinary affair. It was James and I who encountered each other first and I remember he said, ‘Oh, it's you, you never collected your sponge bag …' and I blushed, because I do blush, and because it's unnerving meeting someone you've been to bed with but haven't seen for over twenty years.

Later we discovered that neither of us had told our spouse about the other, which somehow made things easier. Not that we sprang into bed together again all at once.

It was James's son, Alastair, who prompted the revival. He was going for a university interview at Bristol and there was a train strike, so Diane said he could use the family car. James is an architect and had a house to see that day down in Sussex. Pete and I happened to be dining with them when all of this was being discussed and I could see a row was brewing over the dispensation of cars so I offered James a lift. I had to go to Brighton anyway and his appointment wasn't far out of my way. Sometimes I wonder if Diane would have been so pleased with this solution if she had known about me and James in the past.

My own appointment didn't take long. I'm a casting director and I had to see a new young possible for a projected screen test, a problematic, but definitely screen-desirable, boy of nineteen, and James's clients had decided to have a family rather than a refurbished house, so we ended up having lunch together, which went on rather longer than we both intended. And then at the end of it there still seemed more to say. Slightly awkwardly, we arranged another lunch and found we didn't want to stop. Funny, how much more passionate it was than at nineteen.

I looked again at the painting. It would have been fun casting Aphrodite. Her long, tilted, small-breasted body was undeniably erotic, and that hat on top of all that blatant nakedness …

We moved on to look at the Uccello of St George killing the dragon. I like this painting because it looks as if the princess has the dragon on a lead rather than her being held captive by him. ‘Poor dragon,' I said, as I tended to. I've always been on the side of the beast in fairy stories.

James didn't say anything but he was never a great talker. I was the one who rattled on, and he liked me to do so because it allowed him space to think. His wife, Diane, tended to question him rather too much. So when he told me there was something he wanted to say, I guessed that all wasn't well.

We walked, as we did on such occasions, to the Italian restaurant where they suppose we are married. Or, they pretend they suppose. I don't know how many married couples in their late forties still hold hands. But these are Italians, and I cling to a sentimental notion that the Italians still look at things differently when it comes to matters of the heart.

‘It's Diane,' James said, once he'd ordered the wine. ‘She's not well.'

I've noticed that I only have to be working on a film for it to begin to resemble my own life. Or, more scarily, for my life to begin to resemble it. The film I was casting just then was called
Misdemeanour
and was about a middle-aged couple who have been childhood sweethearts and meet after twenty years and fall in love again. But the husband (at the time it was the husband but the director was toying with the idea of making it the wife instead – anyway, one of the lovers' partners) gets MS. It's a kind of ghastly pun, you see, MS demeanour = what is the correct ‘demeanour' with which to meet multiple sclerosis? From which you will understand this is a supposedly arty film: one with a moral to it.

‘Yes?' I said, carefully. It was implicit between us that we never put pressure on each other. Instinctively, I drew back.

‘She may have, well, almost certainly has got, cancer.'

‘Oh hell,' I said.

I could just as well have said nothing. ‘You could always try saying nothing,' my husband, Pete sometimes remarks, when at times I have, untruthfully, suggested that I do not know what to say. I like Diane, you see. That's the hell of it. In another life she and I might have been friends, though not close friends. We aren't enough alike.

The wine arrived just then so we had the usual courtesies of drawing the cork, which meant the conversation, too, was drawn, to a temporary pause. When James had tasted the wine and pronounced it ‘fine', I asked, ‘What kind?'

‘Bladder,' said James briefly. I had guessed it might be breast, which of all the cancers, I have been given to understand, is the least bad. Diane had good breasts; mine were meagre affairs by comparison.

‘Shit!' I allowed myself to say this time.

The starter arrived now, seafood salad for me and a pasta for James. Again we expressed fake enthusiasm and began to eat in silence. A silence that I broke: that was my role.

‘I suppose it makes you feel badly about me,' I suggested. I didn't say ‘us'. Even with James, ‘us' is a term I fight shy of.

He didn't have to reply; I knew him so well. Sometimes I wondered why we even bothered to speak, except that I like to talk and he liked to hear me.

But more than that, I wondered why it took us so long to discover we loved each other? Why did we not recognise this all those years ago, as students back in Newcastle, when there was no one to hurt or be hurt by this sense of the two of us being joined, irrevocably and eternally, in some inexplicable linking light? Why had we so botched it then? Failed to perceive the potential for delight in the other's bone and skin, in misdeeds divulged, in shared observations – starlings scattering across a green dawn London sky, the subtle discretion of a wrinkle in a Rembrandt portrait, the plangent note of a Schubert song, the correct use of an unusual word or phrase – in the lovely, inimitable – and, oh why is this the test of tests? –
smell
of the beloved? Why, oh why, had we parted at nineteen and twenty only to come together at forty-five and forty-six? And why Pete and Diane, two utterly decent people, whom we both loved in another way? Why not a shrew and a monster? A harpy and a bully? Why not two utter beasts whom we could ethically and happily rid ourselves of … but ‘beasts' would have been no help either – I liked beasts …

I recalled suddenly Uccello's dragon and then Aphrodite in her hat. It's
her
doing, I savagely thought. She,
she
has wantonly arranged this terrible timing.

James had finished his pasta, which he had eaten with ferocious rapidity, and was now breaking bread sticks into shards.

‘I don't know what to do,' he said.

This was why I loved James. No, what am I saying? There was no ‘why' about my loving James. I loved him from top to toe and inside out and back to front and reasons were superfluous. I wasn't besotted. I was aware that like everyone else he had his annoying side. It just didn't annoy me. There is no rhyme or reason to these things. But implicated in that love was the recognition that he wouldn't lie to me. And that meant he would never say what he didn't know he truly felt.

‘I shouldn't think you do,' I said bleakly.

He has never said so, but with the part of me that ‘knows' things in my bones I knew that if James loved me too it had to do with the fact that I never pushed him to feel things he didn't feel. Or, more important, not to feel things he did feel. Letting each other be as we were, and not as we might wish that we were, was one of the ways we matched.

Another was my habit of voicing seeming irrelevancies which weren't, so that what I said next had a connection.

‘Perhaps that's why she kept her hat on,' I said, and it drifted into my mind that my godmother used to say ‘Keep your hat on!' when anyone got agitated.

Another ‘reason' for loving James was that he was quick. He didn't say much but his understanding was as swift as mine, so he didn't now say, as most men would, ‘Who?' or ‘Whose hat?' Although he had made no comment on the painting we had looked at that morning together he knew at once who I meant.

‘Perhaps it's too dangerous if she's completely naked,' he agreed.

After that we were both silent again. Toni was filleting my sole and making a fuss over whether we wanted spinach or carrots. I found that, quite desperately, I wanted spinach; you'd think, in the circumstances, I wouldn't give a damn. But when larger matters are beyond your control small things take on an especially vivid importance.

And, in case you are wondering, yes, of course I was thinking: Perhaps Diane will die and then James and I can go off together. But even in the fraction of a second it took to have that thought I knew that such an outcome would be hopeless. There was Pete, solid and kind and, so far as I knew, faithful – and there was Diane; dead or alive, she would matter. That was the point. She mattered to James and so she mattered to me. She was partly why he loved me, because I understood why she mattered.

I can't remember what we talked about for the rest of lunch. Afterwards, we did what we usually did and went back to my office off St Martin's Lane and made love on my couch. And yes, I'm afraid I have a casting-couch, though so far it has only ever entertained one man. I tried not to think about what James had told me, as we embarked on the familiar but ever-sweet engagement, but our poststudent lovemaking had always been real, so after a bit we stopped and had a cup of tea instead and just looked out of the window at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. I suppose there must have been fields there once.

Later, when James had gone, I rang the National Gallery and asked if I could speak to someone who would tell me about the iconography of Aphrodite's hat. They put me through to a young man who was an art historian. He was very polite and began to tell me enthusiastically about the significance of Eros and the bees and how the son of the goddess of love had himself suffered from love's sting and how the ‘hat' – he was especially polite about this – wasn't really a hat at all but – but suddenly I didn't want to hear and I gently pressed the receiver button as he was in full flow. He must have thought me rude; which I regret. I prefer not to be rude.

But I needed no longer to hear what anyone else thought or knew for I knew for myself why Aphrodite wore that hat. It wasn't mischief making. It was a recommendation to avoid total exposure. In case you give everything to someone who can't give it back.

‘By all means go naked,' she seemed winningly to say, ‘but keep your hat on …'

It's a magnificent hat. I have wished since I had one like it; or had been better able to learn from Aphrodite's example.

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